UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Matera 1945-1960: the history of a
‘national shame’
A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of
Philosophy
School of European Languages, Culture and Society
Department of Italian Studies
PhD Candidate: Patrick Christopher McGauley
Supervisor: Professor John Dickie
Submitted in September 2013
Declaration
I,
confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own.
Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has
been indicated in the thesis.
2
Abstract
This thesis examines how and why the southern Italian city of Matera came to
be seen as a national shame and symbol of the southern question in the postwar period. Moreover, it traces the impact that these narratives had on the
city’s social and urban history from 1945 to 1960. It draws on methods from the
history of nationalism, the history of emotions, the new southern history, and
urban history to achieve these aims. A range of primary and secondary sources
are examined including documents from the Italian State Archives in Rome and
Matera, the US National Archive in Maryland, Italian newspapers and
magazines, parliamentary documents and debates, and official newsreel and
documentary footage. The first chapter analyses the image of Matera as Other
and a symbol of southern Italy’s civiltà contadina featured in Carlo Levi’s postwar bestseller Cristo si è fermato a Eboli. It also assesses the book’s impact in
shaping ideas of Matera amongst Italy’s post-war public sphere. The second
chapter looks at how and why Matera came to be seen as a national shame in
the immediate post-war period. It examines the distinct catholic and communist
moral worlds which shaped this notion in a Cold War context. The third chapter
investigates the implementation of the first special law for Matera. It assesses
the project’s limitations and critiques the existing secondary literature on this
topic. Finally, the fourth chapter is a case study of the purpose-built rural village
La Martella. It examines how and why Matera and La Martella were used in
government propaganda to promote official reforms in southern Italy. The
thesis concludes that narratives of national shame and the southern question
directly shaped Matera’s urban and social topography post-1945.
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Table of contents
DECLARATION ................................................................................................. 2
ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................... 3
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................... 4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................ 6
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................... 9
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 10
Scope............................................................................................................................................... 12
Existing literature..................................................................................................................... 13
Sources .......................................................................................................................................... 17
Methods......................................................................................................................................... 21
Thesis structure ........................................................................................................................ 29
CHAPTER 1: CARLO LEVI AND THE ORIGINS OF THE MATERA
QUESTION ........................................................................................................ 33
1.1 CRISTO’S HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT .................................................................... 37
1.2 MATERA IN CRISTO...................................................................................................................... 46
Matera: symbol of the civiltà contadina......................................................................... 47
Matera as Other ......................................................................................................................... 53
1.3 CRISTO’S RECEPTION AND IMPACT............................................................................................ 61
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................ 73
CHAPTER 2: MATERA AND NATIONAL SHAME ................................ 76
2.1 HISTORICAL CONTEXT................................................................................................................. 78
2.2 STUDYING NATIONAL SHAME..................................................................................................... 87
Existing literature..................................................................................................................... 89
Theoretical framework .......................................................................................................... 93
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2.3 AN ANATOMY OF NATIONAL SHAME ...................................................................................... 104
The foreigner’s gaze ............................................................................................................. 106
Housing, morality, and national shame ...................................................................... 119
De Gasperi’s tears .................................................................................................................. 136
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 143
CHAPTER 3: THE FIRST SPECIAL LAW FOR THE SASSI .............. 147
3.1 THE RESIDENTIAL VILLAGE MODEL ....................................................................................... 151
3.2 THE STUDY COMMISSION........................................................................................................ 159
3.3 THE FIRST SPECIAL LAW .......................................................................................................... 165
3.4 IMPLEMENTING THE RISANAMENTO PROGRAMME .............................................................. 177
Serra Venerdì........................................................................................................................... 180
Lanera ......................................................................................................................................... 183
Spine Bianche .......................................................................................................................... 184
Venusio ....................................................................................................................................... 186
Re-evaluating the first special law ................................................................................ 188
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 196
CHAPTER 4: LA MARTELLA: A MODEL FOR SOUTHERN ITALIAN
DEVELOPMENT .......................................................................................... 199
4.1 A BRIEF HISTORY OF IL BORGO LA MARTELLA.................................................................... 202
4.2 LA MARTELLA IN OFFICIAL SOURCES .................................................................................... 209
4.3 MATERA AND LA MARTELLA IN CENTRO DOCUMENTAZIONE FILMS ............................. 219
Accade in Lucania .................................................................................................................. 227
Paesi Nuovi and Cronache del Mezzogiorno............................................................... 231
Borgate della riforma ........................................................................................................... 234
4.4 LIMITATIONS OF THE LA MARTELLA PROJECT .................................................................... 242
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 259
CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................. 262
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................... 270
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Acknowledgements
Researching and writing this thesis has at times felt like ploughing a lonely
furrow. However, I would never have been able to complete the project without
the help and support of countless friends and colleagues.
First I would like to thank the National University of Ireland and the Arts
and Humanities Research Council who kindly funded my research. It would have
been impossible to carry out the required archival work and complete the
writing phase of this thesis without their financial assistance.
My supervisor John Dickie has provided prompt and expert feedback on
my work throughout the last four years. His professionalism and
encouragement have been a constant during my research studies at UCL. I owe
him a huge debt of gratitude. Thanks also to John Foot who has provided lots of
sound academic and practical advice over the years.
I also need to thank Russell King, Stephen Hart, and David Forgacs for
their insightful feedback on my work during my upgrade examination. In
addition, David Forgacs was generous enough to let me read an unpublished
chapter from his forthcoming book and supplied me with some hard-to-find
documentary footage of Matera.
Furthermore, a special thanks to Freda Holly and everyone at the
Wicklow Further Education Centre where I resumed my studies in 2002. I also
want to thank the History and Italian departments at University College Cork.
Diarmuid Scully, Jason Harris, Laura Rascaroli, Silvia Ross, and Mark Chu
deserve a special mention for their help and interest in my development as a
student during my time in Cork.
I also want to extend my gratitude to the staff in the various libraries and
archives that I have used in London and Italy over the last four years. The
archivists at the Archivio di Stato di Matera deserve a special thanks, in
particular Dottoressa Ierardi and Giuseppe Tremamunno who, apart from their
professionalism and courtesy, provided me with many important local contacts
as well as much needed food supplies during my time in Matera.
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My friends and colleagues in the Department of Italian at UCL have been
a constant support throughout this project. Thanks to Maria Coduri, Adam
Greenwood, Nicola Ibba, Oscar Schiavone, Laura Mason, Enza De Francisci,
Federica Signoriello, Tim Demetris, Cristina Massaccesi, Federica Mazzara,
Eleanor Chiari, and last but not least Andrew Campbell who has been a great
friend over the last four years. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Patrizia
Oliver. Without her help I would never have undertaken my MA studies at UCL
back in 2008.
Thanks to John Kelly and Helena Kelleher, Jenny Knighton and Marco
Nicolosi, as well as Paola Bochicchio and Raffaele Mautone for their hospitality
during my various research visits to Rome along with their continued friendship
and support. My friend Ettore Stella in Matera has been a great help tracking
down numerous important primary sources over the last few years. I also need
to extend my gratitude to Domenico Bennardi from MUV Matera who gave me
permission to use a number of the images in this thesis.
Thanks also to Grazia De Michele for letting me read a copy of her PhD
thesis. Moreover, Linda Christenson kindly sent me transcripts of her interview
with Dr. Vincent Barnett. I also want to thank Rocco Brancati for his help during
my research in Matera, especially for arranging my interview with Leonardo
Sacco. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Leonardo Sacco for being so generous
with his time and hospitality as well as providing me with copies of his books on
Matera and Basilicata.
Aidan Hennessey, Ken Doherty, Gary Fitzpatrick, Stan Erraught, Dudley
Colley, Ross Hackett, Anthony and Eugene Dillon, Gareth Sweeney, Oisin Bourke,
Errico De Lisi, Giuseppe Sguera, Ronan O’Conchobhair, Neil Horner, George
Brennan, Bren Jacob, Alan Phelan, Kevin Blood, Joe Kavanagh and Keith Byrne
have been great friends over the years, but a special thanks needs to be
extended to Joss Moorkens for his unfailing patience, kindness and sound
advice.
Jerry O’Connor, Ruth Murphy, Matt O’Neill, and Sheila Butterly have
provided friendship and support throughout my time in London. Pamela
Schievenin, Jun Young Moon, Paolo Ghirardini and Leo Goretti have shared their
7
academic knowledge and, more importantly, have been true friends during
many difficult moments. I need to say a special thanks to David Convery whose
academic advice and friendship have been invaluable over the last four years.
My parents Sean and Sheila have shown an unwavering faith in my
decision to undertake a PhD and have provided moral as well as financial
support throughout my studies. I will never be able to thank them enough. In
addition my siblings John, Tom, Liz, Joe, and Owen and my ever-growing band of
nieces and nephews have been a constant source of love and encouragement.
Furthermore, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Kate, Declan, Jan and Elizabeth in
New Zealand. Thanks also to the extended Carbery, McGauley, and Kavanagh
clans for their continued interest and support. Poi un ringraziamento speciale
alla famiglia Marsiglia per tutto il loro sostegno.
I also want to thank my daughter Eva who inspired me to go back to
education in the first place and has been so supportive throughout this project
despite the numerous sacrifices that my continued studies have entailed for us
both.
The biggest thanks of all goes to my girlfriend Eleonora whose patience,
kindness and love have known no bounds over the last four years. She has had
to endure the many doubts, fears and frustrations that I have felt about my work
first-hand. Without her positivity, encouragement, and continued support I
could never have finished this project.
I began studying Italian back in 2002 at a night class in Wicklow Town
which I attended with my late friend Frank Aherne. This thesis is dedicated to
his memory.
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Acronyms and abbreviations
DC
Democrazia Cristiana
ECA
European Cooperation Administration
GL
Giustizia e Libertà
IMES
Istituto meridionale di storia e scienze sociali
INU
Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica
OPW
Office of Public Works
PCI
Partito Comunista Italiano
PdA
Partito d’Azione
PRG
Piano Regionale Generale
SVIMEZ
Associazione per lo sviluppo dell’industria nel
Mezzogiorno
UNRRA-CASAS
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration-Comitato Amministrativo Soccorso
ai Senzatetto
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Introduction
‘Nessuno sa meglio di te, saggio Kublai, che non si deve mai confondere la città
col discorso che la descrive. Eppure tra l’una e l’altro c’è un rapporto,’
Italo Calvino.1
The southern Italian city of Matera in Basilicata was dubbed a national shame in
the period immediately following the Second World War. Moreover, the city
became a symbol of Italy’s intractable southern question. This was the result of
a period of intense political, intellectual, and media focus on Matera’s infamous
cave dwellings, or Sassi, which housed an estimated 15,000 people in the early
1950s. These distinctive troglodyte homes, some of which date from the
Paeolithic era, were carved into the side of the city’s limestone gorge and then
completed with brick façades. In the early 1950s it was estimated that only 3
per cent of the Sassi’s dwellings had running water and there was no
conventional sewage system.2 In many cases, three generations of one family
lived side-by-side with their farm animals in this 29-hectare labyrinth of semiunderground homes. In the context of Italy’s acute post-war housing crisis,
Matera was portrayed in the national media as a low point for Italian
civilization - a monument to southern poverty and Fascism’s neglect of the
southern question hewn from the living rock.3
Following political and media pressure, the Christian Democrat
government passed a special law for the Sassi in 1951. Its primary aim was to
1
2
3
Italo Calvino, Le città invisibili, Mondadori, Milan, 2003, p. 60
Riccardo Musatti, ‘Viaggio ai “Sassi” di Matera’, Comunità, (1950), no. 9, p. 41
Official data from the immediate post-war period, however, suggests that apart from its large
agglomeration of cave homes, housing conditions at Matera were ostensibly comparable
with many other parts of post-war Italy. See pp. 137-138 below.
10
evacuate uninhabitable cave homes and rehouse their inhabitants in purposebuilt agricultural villages and residential quarters. There was, however, almost
no consultation with the local population about the provisions of the special law
and its subsequent implementation. Instead state intervention at Matera was
carried out from above. The first special law was used to promote the twin
reform programmes that the Christian Democrats had implemented for
southern Italy in the early 1950s. Furthermore, the official intervention
programme saw Matera become a testing-ground for, what was at the time
labelled, Neorealist architecture and the decentralization theories of Italian
town planners and architects. The Sassi were gradually emptied and most of
their 15,000 residents rehoused in purpose-built villages and urban quarters.
The intellectual, media and political focus on the town in the immediate postwar years were fundamental catalysts in initiating this dramatic change to the
city’s urban and social topography. The complicated process of closing
dilapidated cave dwellings and rehousing residents, however, lasted over
twenty years and was never entirely completed.
There is a large body of secondary literature about Matera’s turbulent
post-war history. However, hitherto there has been little research into how and
why the city came to be viewed as a national shame and a symbol of the
southern question post-1945. This thesis aims to fill that gap. Drawing on
previously neglected primary source material and methods, it will examine the
discursive construction of Matera as a national shame and emblem of southern
backwardness in the context of post-war Italy’s complex political landscape,
renewed interest in the southern question, and notions of Italian national
11
identity in a Cold War context.4 In addition it will endeavour to ascertain how
and why these discourses were used politically and the concrete impact that
they had on Matera’s social and urban fabric during the period 1945-1960.
These themes will be examined using research methods that draw on recent
scholarship in the history of emotions, nationalism, urban history, and the new
southern history. Through its study of post-war Matera, this thesis aims to make
an original contribution to these different research areas in the broader context
of twentieth-century Italian history.
Scope
The decision to focus on a specific southern Italian city during the period 19451960 has been made for a number of precise reasons. First, Matera was chosen
because it constitutes a laboratory for examining notions of national shame at a
micro-level. Italian national identity was considered to be in crisis and renewal
in the immediate post-war period following twenty years of Fascist rule,
military surrender, the loss of Italy’s overseas colonies, foreign occupation, and
civil war. The onset of the Cold War saw notions of Italian nationalism reshaped
along apparently transnational ideological lines. The narratives of national
shame produced in the context of Matera, therefore, constitute an ideal test case
for a micro-study of notions of the Italian nation at a moment in history when
the country’s seemingly weak sense of national identity was believed to be in a
4
Stuart Hall’s work on discourse construction is helpful indefining this term in the context of
this thesis. Drawing on Foucault, Hall has defined discourse as ‘a group of statements which
provide language for talking about – the way of representing knowledge about - a particular
topic at a particular moment in history.’ In addition Hall contends that discourse ‘constructs
the topic. It defines and produces the objects of our knowledge. It governs the way a topic
can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about.’ See Stuart Hall, ‘The Work of
Representation’, in Stuart Hall (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying
Practices, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1997, pp. 13-75.
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state of flux. Second, post-war Matera provides a test-case for examining
notions of the southern question. Matera came to be seen as a symbol of the
southern question post-1945 due to the success of Carlo Levi’s book Cristo si è
fermato a Eboli. The book triggered a period of intense political, media and
intellectual focus on the Sassi. Images of the city played a fundamental role in
the ‘rediscovery’ of the Mezzogiorno following twenty years of Fascist rule.
Examining how and why Matera came to be seen as a symbol of the South
between 1945-1960 will shed light on notions of the Mezzogiorno and how they
were used politically in the immediate post-war period. Finally, the time period
1945-1960 was chosen because it encompasses the beginning and the end of
the period of intense media and political focus on Matera, the implementation of
the first special law for the city which initiated the process of emptying the
Sassi, and Italy’s post-war economic boom and rural exodus of the late 1950s.
By 1960 Matera had ceased to be important in terms of political propaganda
and subsequently faded back into obscurity.
Existing literature
A large body of secondary literature has been published about Matera’s postwar history in the sixty years since the risanamento programme for the Sassi
was first implemented. There are a substantial number of works which look at
the social and urban changes that took place in post-war Matera from
architectural and town planning perspectives. 5 Other studies have instead
5
See Marcello Fabbri, Matera dal sottosviluppo alla nuova città, Basilicata editrice, Matera,
1971; Domenico Fiore, Architettura e urbanistica: Il caso matera (1841-1956), Unpublished
graduate thesis, Istituto universitario di architettura di Venezia, 1986; Angela Raguso,
Matera dai Sassi ai borghi (1952 – 1964), Altrimedia, Matera, 2007; Amerigo Restucci and
Manfredo Tafuri, Un contributo alla comprensione della vicenda storica dei Sassi, BMG
13
examined aspects of the city’s social, cultural and political history from the
enactment of the risanamento programme onwards.6 In addition three
chronological urban biographies of Matera have been published which trace the
city’s urban and architectural development from prehistory to the present day. 7
All of these works have made an important contribution to the on-going debate
about Matera’s post-war history. Key texts from the existing secondary
literature will be critiqued in detail at different points throughout this thesis,
but it is necessary to briefly set out some of the gaps which the current research
project aims to fill.
First, it is generally taken as a given that Matera was seen as a national
shame and a symbol of the southern question in the immediate post-war period.
There has been no detailed study of the discursive construction of these
concepts and the subsequent impact that they had on shaping the risanamento
programme for Matera. In contrast, this thesis traces the origins of these
notions, how and why they developed, and their subsequent impact on the city’s
social and urban history during the period 1945-1960.
Second, there has been a tendency to examine post-war Matera in
isolation without taking the broader social, political and cultural changes that
took place in Italy and the wider world into account. Writing about Italian urban
biographies, Sergio Pace argues that by ‘focusing exclusively on the city itself,
6
7
Editrice, Matera, 1974; Anne Toxey, Materan Contradictions. Architecture, Preservation and
Politics, Ashgate, Surrey, 2011.
Leonardo A. Chisena, Matera dalla civita al piano. Stratificazione, classi sociali e costume
politico, Congedo Editore, Galatina, 1984; Alfonso Pontrandolfi, La vergogna cancellata:
Matera negli anni dello sfollamento dei Sassi, Altrimedia Edizioni, Rome-Matera, 2002;
Leonardo Sacco, Matera contemporanea. Cultura e società, Basilicata editrice, Matera, 1982.
See Rosalba Demetrio and Grazia Guadagno, Matera. Forma e strutture, Testo & Immagine,
Turin, 2001; Amerigo Restucci, Matera, i Sassi, Einaudi, Milan, 1991; and Cosimo Damiano
Fonseca, Rosalba Demetrio and Grazia Guadagno, Matera, Laterza, Rome-Bari, 1998
published as part of Laterza’s Grandi Opere: Le città nella storia d’Italia series.
14
they tend to ignore everything that occurs beyond its confines.’ 8 This point is
applicable to the historiography of post-war Matera, in which the broader
changes that took place at a macro-level have largely been neglected. In part
this can be attributed to the fact that many studies of Matera are essentially
local histories written by non-professional historians. However, the same
charge can also be levelled at a recently published academic study of the city’s
post-war history which arguably fails to examine the risanamento programme
in the context of broader historical processes taking place at national and
international levels.9
The existing literature on post-war Matera has generally neglected to
engage with recent scholarship on Italy’s southern question. Anne Toxey’s work
on Matera draws on revisionist studies of the Mezzogiorno. However, she
arguably reduces the complexities of the southern question to a single and
unified ethnocentric discourse rather than approaching it as a contested and
fractured idea.10 This is primarily due to a lack of contextualization of
stereotypical images of Matera and the South. As a result Toxey’s work fails to
adequately explain how and why Matera came to be seen as a symbol of the
southern question in the post-war period, how this idea came to be seen as
8
9
10
Sergio Pace, ‘Through the Looking-Glass: Research on the Italian City in Historical
Perspective’, in Robert Lumley and John Foot (eds.) Italian Cityscapes. Culture and Urban
Change in Contemporary Italy, University of Exeter Press, Exeter, 2004, p. 18
See Anne Toxey’s recent work on post-war Matera. Toxey arguably fails to take the social
and economic upheavals that took place in post-war Italy into account. In particular her
work overlooks the rapid social and cultural changes that the economic miracle engendered.
For example Toxey claims that the risanamento programme was a deliberate government
strategy to transform Sassi residents from dialect-speaking agricultural workers into Italianspeaking tertiary workers. This assertion overlooks the fact that Italy experienced a huge
rural exodus in the late 1950s and that spoken Italian slowly began to replace regional
dialects throughout the country due to a myriad of social and cultural changes in the postwar era. Instead Toxey examines Matera in isolation without taking broader historical
processes into consideration. Toxey, Materan Contradictions, p. 61. For a discussion of
spoken Italian’s rapid growth in the post-war period see Tullio De Mauro, Storia linguistica
dell’Italia unita, Laterza, Bari, 1970, pp. 51-126.
See Toxey, Materan Contradictions, pp. 11-12.
15
convincing, and the impact that it had on the city’s social and urban fabric. This
study, in contrast, will look to make an original contribution to the new
southern history. It will critique the existing literature on the southern question
and historicize the concept of Matera as a symbol of the South in detail. This
approach will shed light on the discursive construction of broader ideas of
southern Italy in the post-war period and allow for their reception and impact
at a micro-level to be examined in detail.
Furthermore, the voices of Sassi residents who were transferred from
their cave homes to new accommodation are largely absent from the existing
historiography. A number of oral history studies have been carried out in recent
years, but little work has been done on popular reaction to the social and urban
changes that took place in post-war Matera and in particular the
marginalization of Sassi residents from the risanamento programme’s
implementation.11 In general historians of post-war Matera appear more
interested in local politics, architecture and urban developments than the
11
Patrizia Zuccari interviewed a number of former Sassi residents for her chapter ‘I Sassi di
Matera: il luogo ritrovato?’, in Lucilla Rami Ceci (ed.), Sassi e Templi. Il luogo antropologico
tra cultura e ambiente, Armando Editore, Rome, 2003, pp. 446-460. However, arguably
Zuccari’s work presents life in the Sassi as an idealized pre-industrial Gemeinschaft which
ignores the class and generational conflicts that appear to have existed amongst the district’s
15,000 residents. Pasquale Doria’s book Ritorno alla città laboratorio. I quartieri del
risanamento cinquanta anni dopo, Antezza, Matera, 2010 also contains fragments of oral
testimony from ex-Sassi residents. In addition Angelo Del Parigi and Rosalba Demetrio
carried out interviews with a number of people that were transferred from the Sassi to new
housing between 1950 and 1970. Their work examines life and culture in the Sassi from an
anthropological perspective. See Angelo Del Parigi and Rosalba Demetrio, Antropologia di un
labirinto urbano, i Sassi di Matera, Osanna Edizioni, Venosa, 1994. Moreover, Anne Toxey
carried out a large number of interviews with former Sassi residents between 2000 and
2006. She has used oral testimonies to examine the impact that narratives of shame
associated with post-war Matera have had on collective memory of the Sassi at a local level.
However, Toxey arguably neglects to examine the mistakes and myths found in these oral
testimonies in favour of summarising broad themes. The subjectivity of these accounts could
potentially shed light on the psychological impact that the risanamento programme had on
Sassi residents. See Anne Toxey, ‘Reinventing the Cave: Competing Images, Interpretations,
and Representations of Matera, Italy’, TDSR, vol. XV (2004), no. 2, pp. 61-78; Anne Toxey, ‘Via
Media: The Circulation of Narratives and their Influence on Tourists’ and Residents’ Actions
and Memories’, Material Culture Review, (2010), no. 71, pp. 67-83; and Toxey, Materan
Contradictions, 2011.
16
people that the first special law directly affected. There is a tendency in the
existing literature to present the estimated 15,000 people that lived in the Sassi
as a unified block with a singular opinion and voice rather than a collection of
individuals with varied opinions, hopes and fears. Drawing on previously
neglected archival material this thesis will look to examine the reaction of Sassi
residents to the risanamento programme. Although these sources are
fragmentary and sometimes filtered through official documents and the party
press, they represent an important contribution to the existing historiography
of post-war Matera.12
Sources
This project makes extensive use of documents from Matera’s Prefecture and
the city’s office of public works related to the first special law for the Sassi and
the subsequent risanamento programme. These files are housed in the Archivio
di Stato di Matera. In addition, the thesis draws on official and unofficial reports
about the Sassi, post-war architectural and urban planning periodicals, political
journals, as well as local and national newspaper articles published during the
scope of this study. These different sources were crucial in examining the
implementation of the first special law for Matera and its various problems in
detail and from a variety of perspectives. Many of these sources have been cited
in the existing literature on the city’s post-war history. However, it became clear
during the research stage of the current project that a number of important
primary sources had been underused or neglected completely in previous
12
It became clear halfway through this research project that an oral history component would
have greatly contributed to including the voices of Sassi residents in the historical narrative
on post-war Matera. Due to temporal and financial constraints, however, it was not feasible
to carry out interviews at that point in time. This is an area which could be developed in
future research.
17
studies of the risanamento programme - in particular the files pertaining to the
first special law’s implementation which are held in the state archive at Matera.
These documents show that the special law’s application was reactive rather
than systematic and they help to shed light on the legislation’s various
shortcomings. Instead in the existing literature on post-war Matera there had
been an overreliance on a number of influential secondary sources which had,
in a number of cases, substituted the historical analysis of archival material. In
contrast this study has drawn on previously neglected primary sources located
in the state archive at Matera as well as in additional archives located in Italy
and the USA. These sources have allowed for a more comprehensive
examination of the risanamento programme and the reassessment of a number
of arguments in the existing historiography. They have also provided important
insights into the reactions of Sassi residents to the rehousing programme that
the first special law generated.
Previous studies of post-war Matera have largely overlooked the body of
relevant primary sources housed at the Archivio centrale dello Stato in Rome. In
contrast, this study draws on the files of the Ministry of the Interior and the
Italian Prime Minister’s office. The documents from the Ministry of the Interior
provided supplemental details of correspondence between the Prefect of
Matera and the Interior Ministry relating to political visits to the city and shed
light on problems encountered during the first special law’s implementation.
The files of the Italian Prime Minister’s office contained some important
documents which illustrated the links made between housing conditions
18
amongst the Sassi and morality in official circles. These sources proved to be
crucial in examining notions of Matera as a national shame.
Furthermore, this thesis draws on files from the US Department of
State’s International Cooperation Administration held in the National Archives
and Records Administration, Maryland. These documents on the construction of
the agricultural village La Martella, built to rehouse 200 families from the Sassi,
have not been used in any previous studies of post-war Matera. They have
added new perspectives to the existing historical narrative and meant that a
more comprehensive examination of La Martella’s construction could be carried
out. Archival research was also carried out at the Archivio Storico dell’Istituto
Luigi Sturzo in Rome. A number of important documents were located in the
Fondo Democrazia Cristiana, Serie segreteria politica (1944-1992). They
revealed internal rivalries and power struggles within the DC at a local level and
enabled a number of arguments in the existing literature to be reassessed.
This thesis has also made extensive use of the large body of newsreel and
documentary footage produced about post-war Matera during the period 19451960. These sources were crucial for examining how the Sassi were used as a
symbol of the southern question in government propaganda promoting the
intervento straordinario: the name given to the implementation of land reform
legislation and a state development programme for southern Italy in the early
1950s.13 Although a selection of this material has been examined in a recent
study of post-war newsreels and ideas of modernization, no previous work on
13
See pp. 90-91 below for the history of land reform and the Cassa del Mezzogiorno.
19
Matera has drawn on these important visual texts. 14 A number of relevant
documentaries and newsreels films were consulted via the Istituto Luce’s online
archive. This resource provided access to a selection of government-sponsored
films that feature Matera in the context of official visits and government
reforms for southern Italy. In addition, a number of important documentary
films from the USIS-Trieste collection that feature Matera and the rural village
La Martella were consulted at the Archivio centrale dello Stato in Rome.15
Examining these visual texts provides a more comprehensive understanding of
how the notion of Matera as national shame and symbol of the southern
question was constructed and later appropriated for political ends.
Finally, this thesis has collected a vast quantity of local, regional, national
and international press articles on Matera published during the scope of this
study. While a number of Italian press sources have been cited in the existing
literature on post-war Matera, the actual texts themselves have rarely been
examined in detail.16 In contrast, the present study has drawn on press material
to examine their contribution in the creation of notions of Matera as a national
shame and a symbol of the southern question in the immediate post-war period.
Furthermore, the existing literature regularly alludes to international media
coverage of Matera in the 1950s but rarely examines concrete examples.
Conversely, this thesis has gathered a large collection of English-language
14
15
16
See Paola Bonifazio, Narrating Modernization: Documentary Films in Cold War Italy (19481955), Unpublished PhD Thesis, New York University, 2007.
For further information on this important resource see David W. Ellwood, ‘The USIS-Trieste
collection at the Archivio centrale dello Stato, Rome’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
Television, vol. 19 (1999), no. 3, pp. 399-404; and Giulia Barrera and Giovanna Tosatti (eds.),
United States Information Service di Trieste: catalogo del fondo cinematografico, 1941-1966,
Ministero per i beni e le attivita culturali, Direzione generale per gli archivi, Rome, 2007.
See for example Carmine Di Lena, Quando l’America scoprì i Sassi. Antefatto della Legge per il
risanamento dei Sassi, Altrimedia, Matera, 2007. It cites and reproduces a large amount of
newspaper coverage on the Sassi but offers no textual analysis of these important sources.
20
articles on the Sassi from physical and digital archives. This has allowed for
Italian claims about the depiction of Matera in the foreign press to be reevaluated.
The large body of primary sources consulted and examined in this thesis
has allowed for an in-depth study of the discursive construction of Matera as a
national shame and emblem of the southern question to be carried out.
Furthermore, these sources have enabled a more comprehensive examination
of the risanamento programme’s implementation and shortcomings to be
achieved compared to the existing literature.
Methods
This thesis employs a number of different methods in order to examine
narratives of Matera as a national shame and symbol of the Mezzogiorno post1945. In its study of how the idea of Matera as Other developed in the
immediate post-war period, this study draws on the work of the urban historian
Alan Mayne.17 His research into the narratives used to create the concept of the
slum in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century provides a theoretical
framework for examining Carlo Levi’s influential description of Matera in his
memoir Cristo si è fermato a Eboli. In addition, this thesis draws on recent
scholarship in the history of emotions, cultural studies, moral philosophy,
psychology, and nationalism in order to examine national shame. Studies of
patriotic narratives in an Italian context have primarily focused on the Liberal
period. This study looks to broaden the scope to the post-war period and thus
17
See Alan Mayne, The Imagined Slum. Newspaper representations in three cities 1870-1914,
Leicester University Press, Leicester, 1993; Alan Mayne, ‘Representing the slum’, Urban
History, vol. 17 (1990), pp. 66-84; Alan Mayne, ‘Review Essay: Tall Tales but True?: New
York’s “Five Points” Slum’, Journal of Urban History, vol. 33 (2007), no. 2, pp. 320-331.
21
aims to make an original contribution to the existing literature on Italian
nationalism. The theoretical framework employed for examining patriotic
narratives is outlined in detail in the second chapter, but the works that
informed the current study will be briefly listed here. Emotions were a
relatively neglected area of research for historians until the so-called ‘affective
turn’ over the last two decades. In the context of modern Italian history, there is
a growing body of research in this area. 18 Silvana Patriarca’s work on national
shame and the Risorgimento has been path-breaking in this regard and is one of
the inspirations for the current study.19 Furthermore, Renaissance historian
Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of an ‘emotional community’ is used to examine
the parameters and norms which shaped how distinct social groups expressed
national shame in the context of post-war Matera.20 The cultural theorist Sara
Ahmed’s work on the cultural politics of emotion proved invaluable for
analysing the ways in which expressions of patriotic emotion define the object
that they purport to describe: the nation.21 Furthermore, in its study of patriotic
narratives this thesis has drawn on John Dickie’s large body of work on notions
of the Italian nation and national identity.22 Building upon Benedict Anderson’s
influential concept of the nation as an ‘imagined community’, Dickie contends
18
19
20
21
22
The Association for the Study of Modern Italy’s annual conference in 2009 was dedicated to
the history of emotions and a number of articles based on conference presentations were
later published. See the articles in Modern Italy, vol. 17 (2012), no. 2, pp. 151-285.
Silvana Patriarca, ‘A Patriotic Emotion: Shame and the Risorgimento’, in Silvana Patriarca
and Lucy Riall (eds.), The Risorgimento Revisited. Nationalism and Culture in NineteenthCentury Italy, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2012, pp. 134-151
Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American Historical Review,
vol. 107 (2002), pp. 821-845
Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Routledge, London, 2004
See for example: John Dickie, ‘Imagined Italies’, in David Forgacs and Robert Lumley (eds.),
Italian Cultural Studies. An Introduction, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 19-33; John
Dickie, ‘La macchina da scrivere: The Victor Emmanuel Monument in Rome and Italian
Nationalism’, The Italianist, vol. 14 (1994), pp. 261-285; John Dickie, ‘Timing, Memory and
Disaster: Patriotic Narratives in the Aftermath of the Messina-Reggio Calabria Earthquake,
28 December 1908’, Modern Italy, vol. 11 (2006), no. 2, pp. 147-166; and John Dickie, Una
catastrofe patriottica. 1908: il terremoto di Messina, Laterza, Rome, 2008.
22
that nations are in fact a myriad of competing and conflicting social fictions.23
He advocates the need for micro-studies of patriotic expressions at specific
moments in history in order to avoid broad generalizations about notions of
national identity. This theoretical approach has been adopted in the current
study. These different methodological strands are drawn together in chapter
two which examines post-war Matera and patriotic narratives in detail.
Furthermore, Matera provides an opportunity to examine notions of the
South after 1945. The Sassi were an important source for images of southern
Italian alterity in the post-war period. In order to examine notions of the
Mezzogiorno as Other it is necessary to outline in brief the historiography of the
South as a concept. The southern question paradigm has influenced the social,
political and economic history of Italy since the country’s unification in 1861. In
addition this concept has played a fundamental role in defining notions of
Italian national identity. It is generally agreed that the framework was born in
the Liberal period through the writings and fieldwork of the first meridionalisti
Pasquale Villari, Leopoldo Franchetti and Sidney Sonnino.24 It is characterized
by two fundamental components: the totalized representation of the Italian
South as a homogeneous territory which is economically and culturally
backward, and the use of a dualistic framework to study the Mezzogiorno:
southern Italy is studied in direct comparison to a normative model of
European modernity embodied by northern Italy. Through this methodological
23
24
See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, Verso, 1991, pp. 6-7.
For an in-depth analysis of the birth of the southern question in the work of Villari,
Franchetti and Sonnino see Dickie, Darkest Italy, pp. 55-82; and Nelson Moe, ‘The Emergence
of the Southern Question in Villari, Franchetti and Sonnino’, in Jane Schneider (ed.), Italy’s
‘Southern Question’: Orientalism in One Country, Berg Publishers, Oxford, 1998, pp. 51-77.
23
prism, the histories of the diverse regions of southern Italy have been reduced
to a ‘single, undifferentiated and stereotyped Mezzogiorno.’25 Stereotypes of the
South in Liberal Italy were created in the context of imagining the Italian nation
and the putative values that it represented. As John Dickie argues: ‘to define
Italy as civilized, one has to have a sense, albeit perhaps implicit, of where that
civilization fades at its boundaries into the barbarous.’26 In the dichotomy
between modernity and backwardness the Mezzogiorno was positioned as
Other to the rest of the country. Stereotypical images of the South, therefore,
were as much the product of narratives of the Italian nation and modernity as a
reflection of material conditions. The southern question paradigm continued to
dominate the historiography of the Mezzogiorno until the mid-1980s.27
Consequently, the different histories of southern Italy’s diverse regions were
reduced to the history of a uniform and stereotyped South; as Piero Bevilaqua
notes: ‘la storia del Mezzogiorno contemporanea ha fatto tutt’uno con la storia
della “questione meridionale”.’28
The framework of the southern question was challenged in the mid1980s with the emergence of the new southern history. The reassessment of
how southern Italy had been and should be studied was spearheaded by a
number of scholars who founded the Istituto meridionale di storia e scienze
25
26
27
28
John A. Davis, ‘Casting off the “Southern Problem”: Or the Peculiarities of the South
Reconsidered’, in Jane Schneider (ed.), Italy’s ‘Southern Question’: Orientalism in One Country,
Berg Publishers, Oxford, 1998, p. 207
Dickie, Darkest Italy, p.12
Lucy Riall provides a detailed summary of the southern question’s historiography from the
Liberal period up to Gramsci’s Marxist interpretation and the recent challenges to the
paradigm which are outlined below. See Lucy Riall, Sicily and the Unification of Italy: Liberal
Policy and Local Power, 1859-1866, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, pp. 1-30.
Piero Bevilacqua, Breve storia dell’Italia meridionale, Donzelli, Rome, 2005, p. 7
24
sociali (IMES) and its journal Meridiana.29 The new southern history highlighted
the paradigm’s theoretical weaknesses and challenged many of the stereotypes
associated with the South. Studying the Mezzogiorno in direct comparison with
a normative concept of the North, it was argued, reduced the diverse nature of
the regions that had made up the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies into a simplified
and totalized territory caught in stasis, thus ignoring the complex cultural and
economic mosaic of southern Italy. This new theoretical framework for studying
southern Italy was adopted by a number of Anglophone scholars in the 1990s
whose work focused on the discursive construction of stereotypical images of
the South – a topic that hitherto had largely been ignored in Italian academic
circles.30
The new southern history successfully dismantled many of the
stereotypes associated with the Mezzogiorno in an academic context. However,
revisionist studies of the South have not been without their shortcomings. The
present work will outline these limitations in brief and then endeavour to avoid
them.31 First, the new southern history has placed too much emphasis on
refuting the validity of the southern question paradigm and not enough
attention on historicizing the framework itself. As a result the effect that
29
30
31
For an unofficial manifesto of IMES’s primary aims see Carmine Donzelli, ‘Mezzogiorno tra
“questione” e purgatorio. Opinione comune, immagine scientifica, strategie di ricerca’,
Meridiana, vol. 9 (1990), pp. 13-53.
See for example: Dickie, Darkest Italy; Moe, The View from Vesuvius; and the collected
volumes Jane Schneider (ed.), Italy’s ‘Southern Question’: Orientalism in One Country, Berg
Publishers, Oxford, 1998; and Robert Lumley and Jonathon Morris (eds.), The New History of
the Italian South, University of Exeter Press, Exeter, 1997.
The large body of work produced in the 1980s and 1990s which re-examined the
historiography of southern Italy has not been adequately built upon in recent years. This
appears, in part, a result of the fact that the Mezzogiorno is not currently fashionable in
academic circles. While academic trends come and go, that does not make the work of the
new southern history any less valid. This thesis aims to draw on, and critique where
necessary, the large body of existing work previously carried out on images of southern Italy
in an attempt to make a small contribution to this field of research.
25
discourses of the Mezzogiorno have had across time and space at intellectual
and popular levels has often been neglected. 32 In particular, the impact that
discourses of the South have had on political decisions and on official policy has
largely been overlooked. More work needs to be done into how and why
specific images of the South came to be seen as convincing at specific moments
in time. To avoid similar omissions historians of the southern question need to
carefully weigh up the reception and impact that the texts under examination
had on notions of the Mezzogiorno - at the time of publication and over time.
They need to assess how texts were disseminated, who actually read them, and
how they were received before any conclusions about their effects can be
drawn.
Second, there has been a tendency to reduce the complexities of the
southern question to a seemingly unchanging monolithic neo-Orientalist
discourse which, it is claimed, was used to subjugate southern Italy.33 This
argument has been taken to its extreme with assertions that the southern
32
33
Nelson Moe’s work is illustrative in this regard. His monograph The View from Vesuvius,
offers detailed literary analysis of key texts which contributed to the formulation of the
southern question paradigm. However, there is a failure in Moe’s book to give adequate
space to the historical context within which these images were created. The View from
Vesuvius focuses exclusively on how stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno were constructed,
neglecting to explore the historical impact that these representations had, how they were
disseminated, who read the various texts studied and how they were received at popular
and political levels. This is primarily due to the rigidity of methodological approaches
applied. The detailed textual and literary analysis he carries out needs to be supplemented
with historical research. For a critique of Moe’s work see John Foot, ‘The View from
Vesuvius. Italian Culture and the Southern Question’, Modernism/Modernity, vol. 10 (2003),
no. 3, pp. 586-587.
See in particular Jane Schneider, ‘Introduction: The Dynamics of Neo-orientalism in Italy
(1845-1995)’, in Jane Schneider (ed.), Italy’s ‘Southern Question’: Orientalism in One Country,
Berg Publishers, Oxford, 1998, pp. 1-23. For a detailed critique of Schneider’s neo-Orientalist
argument see Lucy Riall, ‘Which Road to the South? Revisionists Revisit the Mezzogiorno’,
Journal of Modern Italian Studies, vol. 5 (2000), no. 1, pp. 89-100; and John Dickie, ‘Many
Souths: Many stereotypes’, Modern Italy, vol. 4 (1999), no. 1, pp. 79-86.
26
question was in fact the product of an imperial ideology.34 These viewpoints,
however, overlook the fractured and disparate nature of meridionalismo. To
view all writers on the South as part of a single neo-Orientalist discourse seems
reductive in the extreme. This viewpoint, moreover, arguably reflects a failure
to properly examine images of the Mezzogiorno in the various historical
contexts in which they were produced. The neo-Orientalist framework
therefore elides the very complexities and contradictions that historians should
aim to uncover. As a result it appears to contradict one of IMES’s original aims:
to examine southern Italy’s diverse territories and identities on their own
terms.35
Furthermore, in terms of scope, the bulk of research carried out on
stereotypical images of the Mezzogiorno has focused on the Liberal period. The
post-war era has been relatively neglected in contrast.36 The Liberal period was
undoubtedly a crucial time in the context of forging a sense of Italian national
identity and the work carried out on southern question discourse and patriotic
narratives in that context is exemplary.37 However, historians must be careful
not to fall into the trap of presuming that once broad patriotic narratives are
established they then remain fixed through time. That, in essence, is to confuse
ideas of national identity with how ‘nations’ would like to be seen. Instead
34
35
36
37
See for example Mariella Pandolfi, ‘Before the Southern Question: “Native” Ideas on
Backwardness and Remedies in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, 1815-1849’, in Jane Schneider
(ed.), Italy’s ‘Southern Question’: Orientalism in One Country, Berg Publishers, Oxford, 1998,
pp. 27-45.
See Donzelli, pp. 13-53.
An exception to this point is Grazia De Michele’s important work on the impact that notions
of the South as Other had on the experiences of southern Italian children in Turin schools
between the 1950s and the 1970s. See Grazia De Michele, ‘At the Gates of civilization’
Southern children in Turin primary schools, 1950s-1970s, Unpublished PhD thesis, University
of Reading, 2012.
See Dickie, Darkest Italy.
27
historians need to examine the changing nature of nationalist discourse. If the
‘nation’, as this thesis contends, are a series of competing social fictions, then
these changing discourses need to be studied at various points throughout
history. Moreover, the fact that there are a myriad of patriotic narratives at any
one time suggests that a micro-historical approach is required. Broad claims
about the state of a society based on nationalist discourse are redundant if not
ahistorical.
Italian patriotism was less vocal in the post-war period. Fascism had
discredited the ideology of nationalism and the destruction of the Second World
War had produced an apparent crisis of Italian national identity on the one
hand, and a strong sense of patriotic renewal on the other.38 However, notions
of Italy and a sense of common identity were still very much at stake post-1945.
The different imaginings of the nation were politically inflected in the context of
the Cold War and were one of the means through which political identities were
forged in post-war Italy.39 With these points in mind, Matera provides an ideal
38
39
See Silvana Patriarca, Italian Vices: Nation and Character from the Risorgimento to the
Republic, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010, pp. 188-213; and Ruth Ben Ghiat,
‘Unmaking the Fascist Man: Masculinity, Film and the Transition from Dictatorship’, Journal
of Modern Italian Studies, vol. 3 (2005), no. 10, pp. 336-365.
Gaspare Nevola argues that there was a period of intense political focus on ideas of Italian
national identity in the immediate post-war period until the mid-1950s. He contends that ‘i
partiti di massa [the PCI and the DC], con maggiore o minore convinzione, più o meno
strumentalmente, hanno avuto modo di impegnarsi sulla questione nazionale italiana, sotto
il profilo dell’elaborazione ideologica ma anche sul piano dell’azione politico-organizzativa.
Soprattutto nei primi anni del dopoguerra, quando essi erano alla ricerca di una “legittimità
nazionale”’. This, Nevola argues, sparked a period in which Italy’s two main post-war parties
attempted to ‘formulare e … diffondere letture della vicenda nazionale alternative a quelle
offerte dalla cultura politica liberal-democratica.’ This resulted in the creation of two
ideologically opposed notions of the Italian nation. The PCI formulated the idea of the
‘nazione popolare’ which was meant to contrast with Liberal-era ideas of the nation which
were deemed to have been elitist and bourgeois and a betrayal of the Risorgimento. In
contrast, the DC communicated the concept of the ‘nazione cattolica’ which emphasized the
central role that the Catholic Church had played in Italian culture and society. In essence the
implication was that to be Italian was to be Catholic. See Gaspare Nevola ‘La nazione italiana:
un ritorno dopo il congedo’, in Gaspare Nevola (ed.), Una patria per gli italiani? La questione
nazionale oggi tra storia, cultura e politica, Carocci Editore, Rome, 2003, pp. 32-41.
28
opportunity to examine notions of the nation and the Mezzogiorno after 1945.
The city was an important source for images of southern Italian otherness in the
post-war era. These images were generated in the context of competing and
contrasting imaginings of the Italian nation and the putative values that defined
it.
Thesis structure
This thesis is divided into four loosely chronological chapters. Chapter one
examines Matera’s brief yet influential depiction in Carlo Levi’s best-selling
memoir Cristo si è fermato a Eboli. This book played a fundamental role in the
‘rebirth’ of the southern question following the end of Fascist rule. Although
correctly cited as one of the primary reasons for political, academic and media
focus on Matera in the immediate post-war period, the textual representation of
the Sassi that Levi presented is rarely examined in detail or placed in its
historical, political or biographical contexts. This chapter aims to redress that
fact. It argues that Levi’s depiction of Matera was directly influenced by his
political beliefs and the historical context in which his book was written.
Furthermore, it argues that Levi’s account of the Sassi drew on a number of
literary strategies employed in nineteenth-century slumland depictions. These
narratives were used to denounce the Italian state’s apparent neglect of the
Mezzogiorno. In addition, this chapter examines the reception and impact that
Levi’s most famous work had in post-war Italy. There is an attempt to ascertain
how the book’s success influenced media and political interest in Matera and
shaped attitudes towards the city amongst Italy’s post-war public sphere. This
29
chapter, in addition, examines how Levi’s description of the Sassi was adopted
and adapted by different political interests. In order to contextualize Levi’s
political and intellectual biography the chapter draws on early political articles
published in Piero Gobetti’s Rivoluzione Liberale, his writings for the Giustizia e
Libertà movement and the Action Party, as well as his first book Paura della
libertà. Furthermore, the urban historian Alan Mayne’s framework for
examining slumland depictions is employed to study Levi’s image of the Sassi in
detail. This chapter also makes extensive use of the large volume of press
clippings on Carlo Levi’s work that the Fondo Levi has collected and donated to
the Archivio centrale dello Stato in Rome.
Chapter two examines the discursive construction of Matera as a
national shame in the immediate post-war period. It draws on recent
scholarship in the history of emotions, moral philosophy, psychology and
nationalism to formulate a theoretical framework for studying national shame.
It is argued that the distinct moral worlds of post-war Italy’s catholic and
communist movements shaped the different patriotic narratives produced in
the context of post-war Matera. The chapter contends that broader historical
factors produced a number of similarities in these expressions of national
shame which spanned the Cold War divide. The chapter draws on the large
number of regional, national and international newspaper articles published
about the Sassi during the scope of this study. Moreover, it analyses expressions
of national shame found in parliamentary debates, prefect reports and
additional official documents on Matera in the early 1950s.
30
The third chapter examines the impact that notions of Matera as a
national shame and a symbol of the southern question had on the city’s social
and urban fabric. It focuses on the terms and implementation of the first special
law for Matera in the 1950s. The special law aimed to rehouse families living in
those cave dwellings that were deemed uninhabitable. The aim of this chapter is
to reassess the limitations of the risanamento programme and how narratives of
the city as a symbol of the South influenced this process. It draws on the vast
body of archival material available in the Archivio di Stato di Matera including
the files of the local prefect and the regional office of public works. An attempt
is made to show that the existing secondary literature on the risanamento
programme has neglected to examine key primary source documents in detail.
Instead there has been an overreliance on the arguments that the architectural
historian Manfredo Tafuri put forward in 1974. His conclusions about the first
special law’s limitations appear to have been ideologically driven and have
arguably stifled subsequent analysis. This chapter, therefore, aims to be a
corrective and will re-examine the first special law using primary documents
hitherto neglected while concurrently critiquing arguments put forward in the
existing secondary literature on post-war Matera.
Chapter four is a case study of the rural village La Martella. Built in 1952
to rehouse 200 families from the Sassi, official sources depicted this project as a
model for the future of southern agriculture and an example of the South’s
rebirth thanks to the combined efforts of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno and
Marshall Plan aid. This chapter examines how and why the DC used Matera and
La Martella to promote the effects of its twin reform programme for southern
31
Italy in the early 1950s. It aims to shed light on the way in which the concept of
Matera as a symbol of the southern question was appropriated for political
ends. This chapter draws on archival material from the Archivio centrale dello
Stato in Rome (prefect’s files), the Archivio di Stato di Matera (Ministry of the
Interior and the Italian Prime Minister’s office), the Fondo Democrazia Cristiana
held at the Archivio Storico dell’Istituto Luigi Sturzo in Rome, and US
Department of State files on La Martella from the National Archives and Records
Administration in Maryland. Moreover, newsreel and documentary footage
depicting Matera and La Martella from the Istituto Luce and the USIS-Trieste
collection is examined in detail.
Finally, it needs to be made clear that this thesis does not claim to be a
comprehensive history of post-war Matera. Rather it examines a select number
of themes and primary sources that have been hitherto overlooked in the
existing literature using methods that no other study has employed. This
research project aims to make an original contribution to the large body of
work on Matera and the Sassi, but other accounts are needed to fully
understand the city’s complex post-war history.
32
Chapter 1: Carlo Levi and the origins of the
Matera question
The city of Matera became a symbol of Italy’s southern question in the post-war
period. Matera was also dubbed a vergogna nazionale in media and political
circles.1 These narratives had a concrete impact on the city’s social and urban
history post-1945. The description of Matera in the Turin writer, painter and
political activist Carlo Levi’s book Cristo si è fermato a Eboli played a salient role
in the discursive construction of these concepts.2 The book focused media and
political attention on the city due to its critical and commercial success in Italy
and overseas. Furthermore, Cristo influenced how Matera was studied and
imagined in the immediate post-war period. Levi’s book, therefore, is a key
source for understanding how and why the city came to be seen as a symbol of
the southern backwardness and a vergogna nazionale. The existing literature on
post-war Matera acknowledges that Cristo’s critical and commercial success
was one of the main factors that generated the period of intense media and
political interest in the city examined in this study.3 However, hitherto the
book’s influential description of Matera, as well as how and why it shaped
subsequent images of the city, has rarely been examined in detail. This chapter
aims to be a corrective. It will examine Levi’s image of Matera in detail and then
endeavour to trace its impact and reception on the Italian public sphere in the
immediate post-war period.
1
2
3
Notably Carlo Levi never directly referred to Matera as a ‘national shame’. However, the
term gained political and media currency in the context of debates surrounding the Sassi
from the late 1940s onwards and the notion of the city as Other to putative ideas of
modernity was central to this concept.
Carlo Levi, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, Einaudi, Turin, 1994. Hereafter Cristo.
See for example Sacco, Matera contemporanea, pp. 70-71.
33
Descriptions of Matera and the Mezzogiorno from 1945 onwards were
produced in the aftermath of almost twenty years of enforced silence regarding
the southern question. Following the suppression of both parliament and the
press in 1925-1926, the Fascist authorities had monopolized the mass media;
any counter discourse was reduced to a clandestine level.4 In order to build
political support in southern Italy, Mussolini had appropriated Francesco
Saverio Nitti’s theories of state intervention to deal with the Mezzogiorno’s
economic and infrastructural problems. However, the programme of public
works that the Fascist government established for southern Italy was based on
ruralismo rather than the industrialization policies proposed by the Nittian
school of meridionalismo.5 The primary focus was on land reclamation schemes
culminating in the so-called Legge Mussolini of 1928 which undertook notable
programmes in the Agro Pontino, the Tavoliere di Puglia and the Basso
Volturno.6 Drainage of marsh land became an integral part of Fascism’s
programme of ruralisation embodied by the drive for agricultural selfsufficiency, i.e. the battaglia del grano, launched on 14 January 1926.7 In
addition, Mussolini abolished the Visocchi decree of 1920 which had assigned
uncultivated land to cooperatives of landless rural workers in the aftermath of
the First World War and was viewed as a threat to property rights by southern
land owners. These policies were successful in the context of building political
support for Fascism amongst the southern propertied classes. This led
4
5
6
7
Adrian Lyttelton, La conquista del potere. Il fascismo dal 1919 al 1929, Laterza, Bari, 1974, pp.
381-433 & pp. 633-646
Gabriella Gribaudi, ‘Images of the South: The Mezzogiorno as seen by Insiders and
Outsiders’, in Lumley and Morris, The New History of the Italian South, p. 103
For an account of the Pontine Marshes project and its place in Fascist propaganda see Frank
M. Snowden, The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962, Yale University Press, London, 2006.
For an outline of the battaglia del grano see Claudia Petraccone, Le due Italie. La questione
meridionale tra realtà e rappresentazione, Laterza, Rome-Bari, 2006, pp. 183-190; and Brian
Moloney, Italian Novels of Peasant Crisis, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2005, pp. 52-58.
34
Mussolini to declare at the beginning of the 1930s that Italian culture had finally
been unified and the southern question resolved.8 This position was reflected in
newspaper coverage of southern Italy with Gaetano Polverelli, the head of
Mussolini’s official press corps between 1931-1933, issuing a communiqué to
Italian newspapers in 1931 advising them to avoid using the terms
‘Mezzogiorno’ and ‘Italia meridionale’ to describe southern Italy and Islands
and instead use them when referring to Italy’s African colonies.9 Consequently,
the southern question disappeared from official journalistic debate. The reality
of life in the rural South during the Fascist ventennio, however, was in stark
contrast to the image propagated in official sources and the mass media. In fact,
the period was marked by tax increases, a loss of income through a decrease in
agricultural prices, restrictions on the amount of grain that could be consumed
by rural workers, and changes in American immigration law restricting entry
from Italy. As a result southern Italy’s population began to grow but was not
producing sufficient resources to meet the demands caused by its demographic
boom.10
Peasant land occupations in Calabria, Puglia and Basilicata in 1946 were
one of the factors which sparked the ‘rediscovery’ of the southern question in
the immediate post-war period.11 The publication of Cristo and its subsequent
commercial and critical success contributed to this renewed interest in the
Mezzogiorno. Moreover, the book focused political and media attention on the
8
9
10
11
Petraccone, p. 190
Polverelli’s 1931 list of instructions to the Italian press is reproduced in Phillip Cannistraro,
La fabbrica del consenso. Fascismo e mass media, Laterza, Bari, 1975, pp. 419-424.
Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy. Society and Politics 1943-1988, Penguin
Books, London, 1990, p. 35
See Paolo Cinanni, Lotte per la terra nel Mezzogiorno 1943-1953, Marsilio Editori, Venice,
1979, pp. 65-68.
35
region of Basilicata and the town of Matera in particular. Matera had been
studied and depicted before Cristo’s publication, but Levi’s description of the
city as a metaphor for the rural south and its relationship with the Italian state
triggered a period of intense media and political interest in the Sassi. The image
of Matera that the book presented influenced how the city was studied and
imagined at political and intellectual levels. The text, therefore, is a crucial
source for understanding how and why Matera came to be seen as a symbol of
the southern question after 1945. Despite its important role in the discursive
construction of Matera as a symbol of the South, however, Levi’s text is rarely
analysed or historicized in detail in the existing literature. Given the fact that
Cristo devotes just six pages to its description of the city there was nothing
inevitable about the media and political interest in Matera that it subsequently
generated. For that reason the book’s reception needs to be examined in detail
to understand how and why its description of Matera gained political and
cultural currency in the immediate post-war period.
This chapter will be divided into three sections. First, it will analyse the
political, social and biographical context which shaped Levi’s images of Matera
and the South. Second, it will examine the depiction of Matera in Cristo to
determine its internal logic, illustrating how it was shaped by the author’s
intellectual formation and political vision for Italy during the uncertainty of the
Resistance and the Second World War as well as narratives drawn from
nineteenth-century slumland descriptions. Third, this chapter will examine
Cristo’s reception and impact at political and intellectual levels in an attempt to
36
understand how the book shaped attitudes towards Matera within Italy’s postwar public sphere.
1.1 Cristo’s historical and political context
Carlo Levi’s intellectual formation and the political context within which he
wrote his most famous work informed the image of Matera presented in Cristo.
The book describes the ten months that the Turinese author spent as a political
exile, or confinato, between 3 August 1935 and 26 May 1936 in the towns of
Grassano (where he was detained until 18 September 1935), and then Aliano
(renamed Gagliano in the text) in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. 12 A
mixture of lyrical memoir, internal journey, reportage and socio-political
treatise, Cristo gives an account of the social and economic conditions that its
author witnessed during his internment. Basilicata, for Levi, became
representative of southern Italy, a homogeneous territory characterized by ‘a
uniform peasant society excluded from the ownership of land, immobile in its
folkloric and near archaic culture, and cut off from history’.13 The book also
denounced the failings of the Italian state and the southern bourgeoisie
(personified by Aliano’s gentry and in particular the town’s mayor Don Luigi
Magalone) which, Levi claimed, were culpable for the southern question. In
contrast, Cristo underlines the perceived positive values of southern rural
12
13
Although Levi spent ten months in Basilicata, Cristo presents his time in political exile as a
full calendar year. For an outline of Levi’s time in Basilicata see Gigliola De Donato and
Sergio D’Amaro, Un torinese del Sud. Una biografia, Baldini & Castoldi, Milan, 2001, pp. 107132. Leonardo Sacco offers a comprehensive study of the numerous political exiles interned
in Basilicata under Fascism, from Carlo Levi and Manlio Rossi-Doria to suspected members
of Cosa Nostra, in his book Provincia di confine. La Lucania nel ventennio fascista, Schena
Editore, Brindisi, 1995.
Salvatore Lupo, ‘The Changing Mezzogiorno: Between Representations and Reality’, in
Stephen Gundle and Simon Parker (eds.), The New Italian Republic, Routledge, London, 1996,
p. 250
37
culture, albeit from the othering perspective of an outsider. The civiltà
contadina is presented as an antidote to the belief system embodied by Western
culture and the centralized state. One of the book’s central passages of
reportage is a detailed description of the living conditions that the author’s
sister Luisa Levi witnessed during her brief visit to Matera. Writing about this
section of Cristo in the post-war period, Carlo Levi described it as ‘le pagine più
appassionate e più nere del mio libro.’14 Although taking up just six of Cristo’s
259 pages, this account of Matera’s cave dwellings influenced how the city was
studied, imagined and depicted after 1945.
While Cristo describes the Mezzogiorno’s social and economic conditions
in the mid-1930s, the book itself was written between December 1943 and July
1944 in Florence at the height of the Resistance movement in northern Italy
when the Tuscan capital was under Nazi occupation.15 From October 1943 until
August 1944 Levi went into hiding in a safe house in Piazza Pitti in Florence. It
was here, in a hidden room into which ‘giungeva il rumore di ferro dei passi
delle pattuglie tedesche sul selciato,’ 16 that he wrote Cristo. A letter from Anna
Maria Ichino, who ran the refuge, describes the uncertain climate in which the
book was finished:
14
15
16
Carlo Levi, ‘Tre giorni a Matera’, Illustrazione italiana, December 1952, p. 39
The handwritten manuscript of Cristo is held at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research
Centre at the University of Texas, but a fascimile copy is available at the Central State
Archive in Rome. Giovanni Falaschi has argued that not all of Cristo was written in Florence
(the first date recorded on the 330 handwritten pages being 26 November 1940). The dates
which appear in the finished book (December 1943 to July 1944), however, correspond to
Levi’s time in hiding in Florence. It is believed that he wrote the final section of Cristo there
while also carrying out revisions. Moreover, it appears that Levi had already recounted
episodes from the book orally to friends and had kept detailed notes on his time in political
exile too. See Giovanni Falaschi, ‘Cristo si è fermato a Eboli di Carlo Levi’, in Alberto Asor Rosa
(ed.), Letteratura italiana. Le Opere, Volume V, Il Novevento, La ricerca letteraria, Einaudi,
Turin, 1996, pp. 469-470.
Carlo Levi, ‘Ritorno in Lucania’, in Maria Pagliara (ed.), Carlo Levi. Le tracce della memoria,
Donzelli Editore, Rome, 2002, pp. 127-136
38
Era un periodo duro; pieno di timori, incertezze e speranze e talvolte
nelle lunghe ore di attesa egli amava raccontarmi episodi della sua
attività passata, e del lungo periodo di confino. Nacque così l’idea del
libro e il lavorare ad esso fu l’unica distensione in quel periodo atroce …
non sempre poteva lavorare la sera; non c’era luce, e non sempre
avevamo mangiato abbastanza … Ogni giorno amici e compagni venivano
arrestati e deportati, alcuni uccisi. Eravamo sotto le incursioni aeree ed
ogni giorno non eravamo certi di vedere il seguente. 17
Levi claimed that writing Cristo had allowed him to focus on his time in
Basilicata and momentarily escape the sense of fear and death that pervaded
Florence.18 While he penned his most famous work ‘chiuso in una stanza’19, the
book was produced in the context of Levi’s direct involvement with the
Florentine Committee of National Liberation with whom he founded the
newspaper La Nazione del Popolo. Although the book makes no explicit
reference to the Resistance, it does reflect Levi’s political hopes and anxieties
for the future of a post-Fascist Italian society. The ten-year gestation period
between Levi’s exile in Basilicata and the writing of Cristo had a profound
impact on the book’s final form. This decade allowed him to redefine and bring
together in one place many of the themes that he had encountered and that had
inspired him during his nascent political activism in Turin. These included the
southern question, his belief in autonomia (collective rule at local and regional
levels) and a rejection of the centralized state. 20 The depiction of Matera that
17
18
19
20
The letter from Anna Maria Ichino, dated 16 April 1962, accompanies a photocopied version
of Cristo’s original handwritten manuscript. ACS, FCL, busta 59, fascicolo 135. For further
information on Levi’s time in hiding and clandestine political activities in Florence 19431944 see De Donato and D’Amaro, pp. 152-174.
Carlo Levi, ‘Quando scrivevo il Cristo’, in Pagliara, p. 125. Giovanni Falaschi, however, has
argued that by 1944 Levi would have been aware of Fascism’s imminent demise and this
would surely have impacted his morale and the tone of the book. See Falaschi, pp. 469-487
Levi, Cristo, p. 3
Writing about the ten-year gap between Levi’s internment in Basilicata and the writing of
Cristo, David Bidussa has argued that ‘è un testo che si colloca alla fine di un lungo percorso,
anche tormentato, in cui il confronto tra esperienza vissuta, capacità di comprensione e
39
the book presents needs to be examined in this historical, biographical and
political context.
Despite graduating as a medical doctor at the age of twenty-two, Carlo
Levi primarily dedicated his adult life to painting and politics. He was an acolyte
of the Turin intellectual and journalist Piero Gobetti and wrote eight articles for
the latter’s radical Liberal newspaper La Rivoluzione Liberale between 1922 and
1924.21 Levi’s first article was written in 1922 at Gobetti’s behest. It was a
critique of the southern Liberal-Conservative politician Antonio Salandra.
Although he had joined the Associazione nazionale per gli interessi del
Mezzogiorno in 1921, this was Levi’s first published writing on the southern
question and foreshadowed some of the themes which would later be found in
Cristo, i.e. the apparent mediocrity of Italy’s political class (personified by
Salandra), an analysis of the southern question, Levi’s disdain for the southern
middle classes, and his distrust of federal government.22
21
22
fascino per un mondo percepito come altro obbliga a ripensare molte categorie
interpretative precedenti, magari nella sostanza anche a confermarle ma in ogni caso a
doverle riformulare. La scrittura del Cristo non è avvenuta di getto in una condizione di esilio
o di clandestinità. Essa si configure come un atto testamentario, nel momento in cui viene
scritta, in una sorta di condizione di non tempo, in cui si sovrappongono clandestinità,
turbolenza nel privato e incertezza del futuro.’ See David Bidussa (ed.), Carlo Levi. Scritti
politici, Einaudi, Turin, 2001, p. xv. For a detailed discussion of Levi’s ideas of local and
regional autonomy see David Ward, Carlo Levi. Gli italiani e la paura della libertà, La Nuova
Italia, Milan, 2002.
The eight articles that Levi wrote for La Rivoluzione Liberale were: ‘Antonio Salandra’, La
Rivoluzione Liberale , no. 25, 27 August 1922, pp. 91-92; ‘Il congresso dei popolari’, La
Rivoluzione Liberale, no. 11, 24 April 1923, p. 48; ‘Letture’, La Rivoluzione Liberale, no. 10, 17
April 1923, p. 42; ‘Pensiero fascista: Panunzio S., Diritto, forza, violenza’, La Rivoluzione
Liberale, no. 10, 17 April 1923, p. 42; ‘Il cappone ripieno’, La Rivoluzione Liberale, no. 9, 26
February 1924, p. 33; ‘L’impresario, l’asino e la scimmia’, La Rivoluzione Liberale, no. 41, 4
November 1924, p. 165; ‘I torinesi di Carlo Felice’, La Rivoluzione Liberale, no. 17, 22 April
1924, p. 68; ‘La vita regionale’, La Rivoluzione Liberale, no. 17, 22 April 1924, p. 68. They are
available in original form at <http://www.erasmo.it/liberale/ricerca.asp> (accessed
30/07/2013).
Moloney, p. 147. The full article is reprinted in Gigliola De Donato, Carlo Levi. Coraggio dei
miti. Scritti contemporanei 1922-1974, De Donato editore, Bari, 1975, pp. 3-10.
40
Through Gobetti, Levi came into contact with the meridionalista Guido
Dorso, who also contributed to La Rivoluzione Liberale.23 Dorso’s book, La
rivoluzione meridionale (1924) directly influenced Levi’s vision of southern
Italy. The book called for decentralization to end what Dorso believed was
Northern subjugation of the South from unification onwards. La rivoluzione
meridionale argued that the southern question was a political rather than a
socio-economic problem. The roots of this problem, for Dorso, could be traced
back to the formation of the Italian state. Rather than building on the
revolutionary ideals of the Risorgimento and including the masses in politics,
Dorso viewed Italian unification as nothing more than a ‘royal conquest’: the
extension of Piedmontese state bureaucracy throughout the peninsula.24 The
book traced a direct line from what its author interpreted as Cavour’s politics of
compromise to the trasformismo of Depretis and Giolitti, and ultimately the rise
of Fascism. This, according to Dorso, had manifested itself in a mutually
beneficial agreement between central powers and the southern middle classes:
political power at a regional level was exchanged for support at the ballot box.
Dorso believed that resolving the southern question would be a fundamental
component in any process of political change in Italy. La rivoluzione meridionale
23
24
The twenty articles that Dorso wrote for La Rivoluzione Liberale can be consulted at
http://www.erasmo.it/liberale/ricerca.asp (accessed 30/07/2013). Amongst this number
are the articles ‘Il Mezzogiorno dopo la guerra’ and ‘Appello ai meridionali’, which although
signed by a number of different meridionalisti, including Tommaso Fiore, appear to have
largely been written by Dorso. Both articles contained many of the themes later found in La
rivoluzione merdionale including the Italian state’s failure to build on the values of the
Risorgimeno, the role of the southern middle classes in perpetuating the South’s social and
economic problems, and the rejection of claims that state intervention would completely
resolve the southern question. See Guido Dorso, ‘Il Mezzogiorno dopo la guerra’, La
Rivoluzione Liberale, no. 32, 23 November 1923, pp. 129-130; and Guido Dorso, Tommaso
Fiore et al., ‘Appello ai meridionali’, La Rivoluzione Liberale, no. 45, 2 December 1924, pp.
181-182.
Guido Dorso, La rivoluzione meridionale, Palomar, Bari, 2005, pp. 73-79
41
put forward autonomia, but not separatism, as the only possible solution to
resolving Italy’s political malaise and as a result the southern question.25
In a eulogy written in 1957 to mark the tenth anniversary of Dorso’s
death, Levi directly acknowledged the influence that the latter’s writings had
had on his own meridionalismo and by implication on Cristo. However, Brian
Moloney argues that while the ideas presented in La rivoluzione meridionale
influenced Levi’s theory of local and regional autonomy, it diverged from
Dorso’s outline of how autonomous government should be implemented on a
number of key points. Dorso’s concept of self-government placed rural
agricultural workers in a subordinate position to small rural landowners. He
advocated, moreover, the creation of an intellectual elite which would offer the
political leadership that the southern middle classes had been unable to
provide. In contrast, Levi proposed a more radical form of poltical autonomy
which would be based on the collective values he perceived amongst the
southern rural poor. Autonomy for Levi meant collective rule at a local level
rather than decisions made from above by an elite group.26 This position would
be later reflected in the political programmes of both Giustizia e Libertà (GL)
and the Action Party (PdA) which Levi helped to formulate.
In 1928 Levi founded an anti-Fascist political magazine in Turin entitled
La lotta politica and from 1930 onwards became GL’s representative in Paris
where, in 1931, he played an active part in writing the movement’s programme.
The concept of autonomous, local and regional government was central to GL’s
manifesto. Levi’s anti-Fascist political activity resulted in his arrest on 13 March
25
26
Ibid., pp. 261-281
Moloney, p. 179
42
1934 before he was released on 9 May with a two-year suspended sentence. He
was rearrested on 15 May 1935 and sentenced to three years internment in
Basilicata.27 Although he received a three-year sentence, Levi was granted
amnesty after ten months following Italy’s annexation of Abyssinia in May 1936.
He subsequently lived in exile in France until 1941 where he wrote his first
book Paura della libertà (1947). Between 1941 and 1944 Levi played an active
role in the Resistance movement as a member of the Partito d’Azione and editor
of La Nazione del Popolo in Tuscany - and later L’Italia Libera in Rome. This was
also the period in which Levi penned Cristo. The political ideas that GL and later
the Partito d’Azione espoused are key to understanding Levi’s political
aspirations while he was writing his most famous work. These hopes and
anxieties both informed and are reflected in his depiction of southern Italy and
Matera.
Levi wrote a number of articles published in the Parisian edition of
Quaderni di Giustizia e Libertà from 1932-1933.28 They focused on
contemporary Italian politics, the nature of Italian Fascism and GL’s political
position in contrast to other clandestine opposition parties. One theme
dominated these writings: the concept of political autonomy. Levi rejected the
economic argument that Fascism was simply the result of Italy’s petit
bourgeoisie protecting its own economic interests. Paraphrasing Gobetti, Levi
27
28
For a detailed summary of Levi’s intellectual formation see Nicola Carducci, Storia
intelletuale di Carlo Levi, Pensa MultiMedia, Lecce, 1999, pp. 11-52. Angelo d’Orsi offers a
comprehensive account of Gobetti’s political and intellectual influence on Levi in the chapter
‘Carlo Levi e l’aura gobettiana’, in Gigliola De Donato (ed.), Carlo Levi il tempo e la durata in
“Cristo si è fermato a Eboli”, Edizioni Fahrenheit 451, Rome, 1999, pp. 31-64.
See in particular Carlo Levi, ‘Seconda lettera dall’Italia’, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libertà,
(1932), no. 2. Reprinted in De Donato, Carlo Levi. Coraggio dei miti, pp. 33-40; Leone
Ginzburg and Carlo Levi, ‘Il concetto di autonomia nel programma di G.L.’, Quaderni di
Giustizia e Libertà, (1932), no. 4 which is reproduced in Leonardo Sacco (ed.), Carlo Levi.
L’altro mondo è il Mezzogiorno, Casa del Libro Editrice, Reggio Calabria, 1980, pp. 49-52.
43
described the Fascist party’s rise to power as an ‘autobiografia della nazione’
which reflected, in his opinion, the Italian people’s fear of freedom and personal
responsibility combined with the adoration of the entity which fulfilled
individual needs, i.e. the centralized state.29 Furthermore, Levi believed that
without a major restructuring of Italian society, and in particular of Italian
politics, the danger of a new form of fascism emerging post-Mussolini was a
concrete possibility.30
Autonomy was put forward as a means for avoiding this outcome.
Outlining GL’s political programme in 1932, in an article co-written with Leone
Ginzburg, Levi argued that: ‘in verità, una sola posizione è possibile, come
assolutamente rivoluzionaria e antifascista: un integrale liberalismo.
Rivoluzione in Italia significa libertà, capacità di libertà; autonomia nella più
larga espressione del termine: nei riguardi dello Stato: autogoverno.’31 Notably
GL was equally critical of what it saw as Communism’s deification of the
centralized state. It claimed that Italian Communist Party (PCI) members
adhered to the party line rather than taking an active role in political
decisions.32 GL’s concept of self-government, however, was deliberately defined
as a fluid concept. David Ward notes that this was ‘not because of any real
vagueness in their [GL’s] thought, but simply because they are convinced that
actual forms cannot be worked out until the specific circumstances and the
context of the question to be resolved are clear.’ 33 Levi’s time as a political exile
29
30
31
32
33
Ward, Carlo Levi, pp. 16-18
Ibid., pp. 16-18
Carlo Levi, ‘Seconda lettera dall’Italia’, Quaderni di Giustizia e Libertà, (1932), no. 2.
Reprinted in De Donato, Carlo Levi. Coraggio dei miti, p. 35
Ibid., pp. 43-44
David Ward, Piero Gobetti’s New World: Antifascism, Liberalism, Writing, University of
Toronto Press, Toronto, 2010, p. 111
44
in Basilicata provided him with a precise context and location to expand on GL’s
concept of autonomy. GL’s political beliefs would be central to the Action Party
of which Levi was a key member.
Founded in the summer of 1942 and defunct by 1946, the Action Party
was a loose coalition of anti-Fascist Liberal Socialists involved in the Resistance
movement which had a lasting influence on Italian political and intellectual life
notwithstanding its short lifespan. 34 The different ideological strands of the
party were united by a number of core beliefs, closely based on the political
programme for the GL movement which Levi had penned in 1931 and which
punctuate his political-philosophical treatise Paura della libertà.35 First, the
Partito d’Azione (PdA) believed that Fascism was not just a historical deviation
as Croce claimed; rather it was a product of the Italian state’s failure from the
Risorgimento onwards to create a fully democratic and unified state. Second the
fall of Fascism was seen as a unique opportunity to move away from the socioeconomic and political-cultural models which had characterized the Liberal
period - reaching their nadir with the rise of Mussolini - and instead rebuild
Italian society, culture and identity in the post-Fascist era based on the values of
the Resistance. Third, the PdA rejected the idolization of the monolithic state by
mass parties, mass society and critiqued the imposition of power from above by
34
35
David Ward, AntiFascisms. Cultural Politics in Italy, 1943-46, Associate University Presses,
London, 1996, p.124. For a comprehensive history of the Partito d’Azione see Giovanni De
Luna, Storia del Partito d’Azione 1942-1947, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1982.
Paura della libertà was written between September and December 1939 at La Baule in
Brittany but not published until 1946. The book was a reflection on the causes of what Levi
believed to be a crisis in Western civilization. Paura della libertà explores the themes of selfgovernment and the deification of the State. Notably the book contains a number of passages
about state worship which foreshadow the style and content found in the political crescendo
towards the end of Cristo. See Carlo Levi, Paura della libertà, in Bidussa, pp. 134-137. For an
analysis of the intertextuality between Cristo si è fermato a Eboli and Paura della libertà see
Lawrence Baldassaro, ‘Cristo si è fermato a Eboli e la Paura della libertà’, in De Donato, Carlo
Levi il tempo e la durata, p. 81-86.
45
centralized government. Instead the Action Party proposed a programme of
autonomous, local and regional government designed to meet the specific
demands of citizens in different parts of the peninsula.36 These political beliefs
were informed by Levi’s intellectual formation and shaped his depiction of
southern Italy and Matera in Cristo.
1.2 Matera in Cristo
Levi presented the Sassi as a monument to the Italian state’s continued failure
to resolve the southern question. Matera embodied the abyss that Levi
perceived between the Italian state and southern rural culture. For Levi the
centralized state was the primary cause of southern Italy’s economic problems:
‘non può essere lo Stato … a risolvere la questione meridionale, per la ragione
che quello che noi chiamiamo problema meridionale non è altro che il problema
dello Stato.’37 Reflecting GL’s political programme and the influence of Dorso,
Levi rejected the statism of mass parties on both the Left and the Right and their
attempts to resolve the southern question through state intervention from
above. Instead he claimed that southern Italy’s social and economic problems
could only be resolved through a system of government which directly involved
the rural poor, i.e. autonomous local rule.38 Levi depicted the Sassi as the
embodiment of southern Italy’s social and economic problems; a symbol of the
Italian state’s failure to tackle the southern question during its first eighty-years
of existence.
36
37
38
These points are outlined in detail in Ward, AntiFascisms, pp. 124-173.
Levi, Cristo, p. 220
Ibid., pp. 222-223
46
Notably the description of Matera in Cristo is recounted to Carlo the
protagonist by his sister Luisa using reported speech.39 This literary device
renders the book’s account of Matera more melodramatic.40 Rather than the
impressions of Carlo, who had already witnessed the poverty of Grassano and
Aliano and had become acclimatized to scenes of degradation, the reader is
presented with the thoughts of an urbane, Turin-based doctor on her first visit
to southern Italy. This means that Luisa Levi’s sense of horror at the Sassi’s
living conditions is heightened in the narrative.41 Furthermore, through the use
of reported speech, the line between the author’s thoughts and those of his
character, in this case Luisa Levi, are blurred and at times indistinguishable.
While the description of the Sassi in Cristo comes ostensibly from the mouth of
the protagonist’s sister, its political undertones make it clear that her voice is
being channelled through Carlo Levi the author.
Matera: symbol of the civiltà contadina
Cristo presents Matera as a symbol of southern Italy’s civiltà contadina. One of
the ways this is achieved is through the description of the city’s topography. The
irreconcilable divide between the Italian state and the southern rural poor is a
39
40
41
Luisa Levi was born in 1898 and graduated with a degree in medicine in 1920. She
continued her studies in Paris in 1927 where she specialized in pediatric neuropsychology.
In the 1920s and 1930s she published widely in her field of expertise and worked in a
number of psychiatric hospitals in Italy until the application of the leggi razziali in 1938. For
a detailed biography of Luisa Levi’s professional career and a bibliography of her work see
http://scienzaa2voci.unibo.it/biografie/1160-levi-luisa (accessed 24/08/2013).
Carlo Levi’s use of reported speech to describe Matera is briefly discussed in Restucci and
Tafuri, p. 31.
Gigliola De Donato notes that unlike the rest of Cristo’s handwritten manuscript, the six
pages on Matera were rewritten and corrected many times. Furthermore, it is the only
section of the book in which the author left a double space between his text. De Donato
contends that this illustrates the difficulty that Levi experienced in inserting the section on
Matera into the narrative and is arguably the reason why Luisa Levi rather than Carlo the
protagonist describes the Sassi to the reader. Gigliola De Donato, Le parole del reale. Ricerca
sulla prosa di Carlo Levi, Edizioni Dedalo, Bari, 1998, pp. 129-130.
47
recurring leitmotif in Cristo. Levi repeatedly underlined what he perceived as
the social and cultural gap between le due Italie, i.e. the Italian state, which
imposed its will from above, and the southern rural poor, embodied by
Gagliano’s agricultural workers, who viewed ‘quelli di Roma’ with suspicion:
‘per i contadini, lo Stato è piú lontano del cielo, e piú maligno, perché sta sempre
dall’altra parte. Non importa quali siano le forme politiche, la sua struttura, i
suoi programmi.’42 Levi explicitly outlined this perceived dualism in the
penultimate chapter of Cristo: ‘Siamo anzitutto di fronte al coesistere di due
civiltà diversissime, nessuna delle quali è in grado di assimilare l’altra.
Campagna e città, civiltà precristiana e civiltà non piú cristiana, stanno di fronte;
e finché la seconda continuerà ad imporre alla prima la sua teocrazia statale, il
dissidio continuerà.’43 The perceived abyss between these two dissenting
cultures was directly reflected in Levi’s description of Matera. Reflecting the
political beliefs developed through his writings for La Rivoluzione Liberale,
Giustizia e Libertà and later the Action Party, Matera became the architectural
expression of what Levi believed was the state’s imposition of its political will
on southern Italy’s rural poor.44
The town of Matera is divided into two different parts: the Piano, where
the modern section of the town was built from the eighteenth century onwards,
and the Sassi, which have been inhabited since at least the fourth century. The
economic and social gap between the Piano and the Sassi became more marked
42
43
44
Levi, Cristo, p. 67. The emptiness of Fascist rhetoric in resolving the southern question is
embodied by Gagliano’s public urinal which was built at great expense, but only used by
Carlo the protagonist. Ibid., p. 41.
Ibid., p. 221
Nicola Longo, ‘I luoghi del “Cristo si è fermato a Eboli” e la loro topografia’, in De Donato,
Carlo Levi il tempo e la durata, p. 157
48
in the nineteenth century with the former housing Matera’s middle-class
professionals, landowners and government officials, while the latter was
inhabited by the city’s rural poor, who became ever further marginalized from
the town’s economic and administrative centre.45 Levi used the social,
topographical and architectural divisions between Matera’s two distinct urban
areas as a metaphor for his meridionalismo. The image of Matera presented in
Cristo embodied the separation that he perceived between the Italian state and
the civiltà contadina, i.e. those in power and the disenfranchised.
The Piano, accordingly, is depicted as embodying the Italian state which
imposes its will on the southern rural poor from above with the help of the
southern middle class. On her arrival in Matera, Luisa Levi notes that instead of
the ‘città pittoresca’ described in her guidebook she finds herself ‘su una specie
di altopiano deserto’ in which ‘sorgevano, sparsi qua e là, otto o dieci grandi
palazzi di marmo, come quelli che si costrusicono ora a Roma.’46 These
buildings represent the functions of the state: ‘questi palazzi novecenteschi
erano la Questura, la Prefettura, le Poste, il Municipio, la Caserma dei
Carabinieri, il Fascio, la Sede delle Corporazioni, l’Opera Balilla e così via.’ 47
Echoing Dorso’s claims that the Risorgimento was merely a ‘conquista regia’48
of southern Italy by the Piedmontese government, the Piano, with its austere
and incongruous official buildings, is compared to a grotesque colonial outpost:
‘Sembrava l’ambizioso progetto di una città coloniale, improvvisato a caso, e
45
46
47
48
Rosalba Demtrio and Grazia Guadagno, Matera. Forma e strutture, Testo & immagine, Turin,
2001, pp. 47-68
Levi, Cristo, p. 73. Following Matera’s promotion to provincial capital in 1927 a number of
new official and commercial buildings were constructed on the Piano. These included
provincial administrative buildings, the Chamber of Commerce, a new school, a Bank of
Napoli in Piazza Vittorio Veneto and a new post office. See Restucci and Tafuri, p. 30.
Levi, Cristo, p. 73
Moloney, p. 151
49
interrotto sul principio per qualche pestilenza, o piuttosto lo scenario di cattivo
gusto di un teatro all’aperto per una tragedia dannunziana.’ 49 The description of
the Piano underlines one of the supplemental functions of Matera throughout
Cristo, i.e. to represent the state’s imposition of its will upon the rural poor. This
point is most famously depicted in the order from the Questura di Matera
denying Levi permission to work as a doctor in Gagliano.50 Nicola Longo notes
that: ‘Matera è semplicemente una Roma in piccolo, né migliore né peggiore:
dovunque il potere s’incarna ed esiste perché è contro i contadini, contro il
buonsenso, contro le stesse leggi e il diritto.’51 However, as illustrated above, it
is the Piano which Levi presented as the embodiment of Rome’s authority and
bureaucracy. In contrast, the Sassi and their inhabitants embodied the
Mezzogiorno’s civiltà contadina, excluded by the Italian state’s centralized rule.
The dire living conditions of Matera’s cave dwellings were an extreme
manifestation of what Levi described as the ‘dissidio secolare’ between the
Italian state and the southern rural poor.52 During the political crescendo near
the end of Cristo, Levi warned of the potential consequences if no effort was
made to bridge this gap. In the dichotomy between the state and the civiltà
contadina, Matera became synonymous with southern Italy’s rural poor:
La civiltà contadina sarà sempre vinta, ma non si lascerà mai schiacciare
del tutto, si conserverà sotto i veli della pazienza, per esplodere di tratto;
e la crisi mortale perpetuerà. Il brigantaggio, guerra contadina, ne è la
prova: e quello del secolo scorso non sarà l’ultimo. Finché Roma
governerà Matera, Matera sarà anarchica e disperata, e Roma disperata e
tirannica.53
49
50
51
52
53
Levi, Cristo, p. 73
Ibid., p. 201
Longo, p. 158
Levi, Cristo, p. 220
Ibid., p. 221
50
Levi expanded upon the concept of Matera as the symbolic capital of the
Mezzogiorno’s civiltà contadina in his post-war writings. This point is
exemplified in a talk given at the Associazione culturale italiana’s conference in
Turin on 31 March 1950: ‘Che Matera, almeno simbolicamente, sia una capitale,
è altrettanto fuori dubbio, tanta vi è là la chiarezza della civiltà che vi si
manifesta, della civiltà contadina, non contaminata dai contatti storici.’ 54
Notably Levi’s concept of the Mezzogiorno and contadini had at this point
transcended the geographical confines of southern Italy and the class
distinction of its rural workforce.55 In his 1950 novel L’Orologio Levi built
further upon his concept of Italy’s due civiltà dividing society into two distinct
groups: Contadini and Luigini. This first group was loosely defined as ‘tutti
quelli che fanno le cose, che le creano, che le amano, che se ne contentano’ 56 and
included not just agricultural workers but the industrial proletariat,
intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and, in short, anyone who produced something
tangible.57 In contrast, the Luigini, named after Gagliano’s Fascist Mayor Don
Luigi Magalone, were described as ‘quelli che dipendono e comandano; e amano
e odiano le gerarchie, e servono e imperano.’58 This second group was described
as parasitic and comprised primarily of state bureaucrats and Italy’s lower
middle classes.59 Rome, described as a city ‘fuori della vita reale e dello sviluppo
di ogni giorno, ai nomi eterni dell’Impero e della Chiesa e dalla informe eternità
della burocrazia’, was dubbed the Luigini’s symbolic capital.60 In contrast Levi’s
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
Carlo Levi, ‘Il contadino e l’Orologio’, in De Donato, Carlo Levi. Coraggio dei miti, p. 56
Ibid., p. 55
Carlo Levi, L’Orologio, Einaudi, Turin, 1950, p. 192
Ibid., pp. 191-192
Ibid., p. 192
Ibid., pp. 192-193
Carlo Levi, ‘Il contadino e l’Orologio’, p. 55
51
post-war writing placed Matera firmly at the centre of this loosely-defined
dichotomy as the symbolic capital of the southern Italy’s rural culture.61
Levi further underlined the concept of Matera as the capital of the civiltà
contadina in an interview from August 1959 that featured in Mondadori’s
popular weekly rotocalco Epoca. The author commented that ‘fra mille luoghi
dell’Italia meridionale, Matera ha rappresentato la prima esperienza, la più
vera, la più completa, il primo punto di contatto reale con i problemi della vita
del popolo del Mezzogiorno.’62 Levi continued that the town had: ‘Il carattere di
un luogo centrale e significante ... la capitale del mondo contadino … la sua
realtà e i suoi problemi, rappresentino un punto centrale e tipico di quel grande
movimento che va rinnovando e modificando sostanzialmente il
Mezzogiorno.’63 Levi positioned Matera at the centre of his imagined South. He
transformed the Sassi into a metonym of the southern question and the decades
of division that he perceived between the state and the rural poor, between
Contadini and Luigini. Thus, for Levi, Matera became an idea as much as a
geographical space. This discourse of Matera and the Sassi as the symbolic
capital of the civiltà contadina echoed in depictions of the town in the post-war
period. Matera became synonymous with the perceived social and economic
problems of the entire rural Mezzogiorno. This concept would have a concrete
impact on how the city was studied and imagined in the post-war period.
Matera was seen as a testing ground for resolving the southern question. As a
61
62
63
Ibid., p. 60
This quote is reproduced in Sacco, Carlo Levi, p. 41
Ibid., p. 41
52
result generic development models for the entire South were applied to a
specific local case with limited results.64
Matera as Other
The description of Matera in Cristo served a supplemental function. It looked to
denounce what Levi perceived as the Italian state’s neglect of southern Italy
from unification onwards. Furthermore, the description of living conditions
amongst Matera’s cave dwellings was designed to shock the book’s implied
middle-class readership. The narrative strategies that Levi used to achieve
these aims resemble slumland depictions from the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Matera’s complex network of cave dwellings is presented
as Other to notions of the modern city. This narrative would influence how
Matera was depicted in mass media and political sources in the post-war
period. The literary techniques that Levi used to construct his image of Matera,
therefore, need to be examined in detail. The work of the urban historian Alan
Mayne is useful in this regard. His research focuses on the representation of
slums in Britain, Australia, and the United States in the yellow press from 1870
and 1914. He argues that the concept of the slum was a discursive construct.
According to Mayne, slumland depictions used a set of scenarios and stock
figures to reduce the complexities of substandard inner-city housing to a series
of stereotypes that a middle-class audience would easily recognise and
understand. The slum was described as Other and juxtaposed with an idealized
notion of the modern urban city. One of the primary aims of these descriptions
was to create a sense of alarm amongst readers and promote the need for urban
64
This point is developed in detail in Chapter 3.
53
renewal projects. Descriptions of slums, Mayne contends, did not mirror the
social conditions of inner-city housing; rather they used a set of literary tropes
to create the concept of the slum in the popular imagination.65
In his study of slum depictions in the yellow press of Britain, Australia
and the United States, Mayne identified a number of recurring strategies that
were used to create and reinforce stereotypical slumland images for an implied
middle-class audience. Levi adopted a number of similar tropes in his
description of Matera in Cristo. First, Mayne contends that the concept of time
was used to create a contrast between notions of the modern city and the slum.
Visitors to slums were described as being in a hurry and working to a timetable.
They were depicted as focused and energetic. In contrast, time in the slum was
apparently ignored. The pace of life was lethargic and slum dwellers were
depicted as listless and slothful.66 Furthermore, the imagined temporal
differences between the modern city and the slum were created through the
juxtaposition of images of light and dark. These were synonyms for day and
night, which in turn acted as metaphors for notions of virtue and vice. Words
such as gloomy, shadowy, dark, and black were frequently used in slumland
descriptions. Moreover, slums were often referred to as black spots or stains
upon the city. References to time were also used to juxtapose notions of the
modern city with the apparent backwardness and decay of the slum. Slumland
dwellings lacked the amenities and privacy of the ideal bourgeois home. They
were described as relics of a bygone age. According to Mayne, these narratives
65
66
See Mayne, The Imagined Slum; Mayne, ‘Representing the slum’; and Mayne, ‘Review Essay:
Tall Tales but True?’.
Mayne, The Imagined Slum, p. 167
54
contributed to the agenda of urban reformers who used them to argue for the
need to carry out slum clearances. 67
The description of Matera in Cristo echoes a number of these narratives.
Luisa Levi is described as being pressed for time during her visit to Basilicata
and complains about having to waste a day waiting for a bus in Matera before
travelling on to Gagliano.68 This creates a clear temporal divide between the
apparently timeless world of the South, and Matera in particular, and the
implied modernity of Turin and the North from which she has travelled. There
appears to be no sense of ordered time during Luisa Levi’s visit to the Sassi. The
women encountered are described as exhausted due to malnourishment and
the children depicted are described as either listless due to disease or swarming
wildly in large groups. Cristo uses images of light and dark in its description of
the Sassi. This implies a divide between Matera and notions of the modern city.
The valley in which the Sassi are situated is described as being ‘un brutto colore
grigiastro’ as well as having ‘un’aria cupa e cattiva’. 69 Furthermore, Matera’s
cave dwellings are labelled ‘buchi neri’ and ‘grotte scure’.70 In slumland
literature darkness inferred night-time and was often employed as a metaphor
for vice. It was a means for creating an image of the slum as a stain upon the
modern city. This narrative trope is further implied in Cristo through Luisa
Levi’s initial impression of Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano: ‘Hanno la forma
con cui, a scuola, immaginavamo l’inferno di Dante.’ 71 Matera, therefore, is
presented to the implied middle-class reader as resembling hell on earth. In
67
68
69
70
71
Ibid., p. 173
Levi, Cristo, pp. 75-76
Ibid., p. 78
Ibid., p. 78
Ibid., p. 79
55
addition, the description of Matera’s cave homes in Cristo implies a temporal
divide between the Sassi and notions of the modern city: ‘Passava sui tetti delle
case, se cosí quelle si possono chiamare. Sono grotte scavate nella parete di
argilla indurita del burrone.’72 The implication is that the Sassi’s troglodyte
dwellings resemble a bourgeois understanding of what constitutes a home, but
are in fact not worthy of that title. The contrast with the implied home of the
putative modern city is developed further through the interior description of
Matera’s distinctive housing. Luisa Levi notes that ‘vedevo l’interno delle grotte,
che non prendono altra luce e aria se non dalla porta. Alcune non hanno
neppure quella: si entra dall’alto, attraverso botole e scalette. Dentro quei buchi
neri, dalle pareti di terra, vedevo i letti, le misere suppellettili, i cenci stesi.’ 73
The families that lived in these caves, moreover, shared their homes with farm
animals: ‘Ogni famiglia ha, in genere, una sola di quelle grotte per tutta
abitazione e ci dormono tutti insieme, uomini, donne, bambini e bestie.’ 74 The
inference from this description is that Matera’s cave homes were a remnant of a
previous age and an affront to what would have been considered acceptable
housing conditions amongst the book’s implied bourgeois reader.
Smell was an additional narrative used to depict the slum as alien to the
idea of the salubrious modern city according to Mayne’s thesis. Frequent
references were made in slumland depictions to bad smells, stenches, and foul
odours. In the mid-nineteenth century, before the emergence of germ-disease
theory, it was believed that illnesses such as malaria and cholera were caused
by miasmas or ‘bad air’. As a result bad smells were associated with dirt,
72
73
74
Ibid., p. 79
Ibid., p. 79
Ibid., p. 79
56
disease, and unsanitary living conditions.75 Mayne’s research shows that slums
in Britain and the USA were depicted as stench-filled and overcrowded. They
were presented as a potential danger to the health of the modern city and its
inhabitants. Newspaper references to slums as ‘plague spots’ and ‘hot beds of
disease’ were commonplace. In addition, links were made between physical and
social ills. Bad smells were associated with moral degeneracy. Mayne argues
that the concept of slums as malodorous and filthy breeding grounds for
infectious and moral disease played an important role in the promotion of slum
clearances.76 Levi employed similar narrative techniques in his description of
the Sassi. Matera’s cave homes are described as ‘scure e puzzolenti’.77 Moreover,
they are presented as airless and filthy. The link between bad smells, dirt and
disease is further elaborated in the description of health conditions that Luisa
Levi witnesses. She sees malnourished children suffering from tracoma,
malaria, dysentery and possibly black fever. 78 The Sassi are compared to ‘una
città colpita dalla peste.’79 These narratives help to create an image of Matera as
Other; the antithesis to the putative notion of the modern city which is implied
throughout Carlo Levi’s text.
According to Mayne’s thesis slumland depictions featured five stock
characters appropriate to the stylized setting in which they resided. He argues
75
76
77
78
79
Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (eds.), The Essential Foucault: Selections From the Essential
Works of Foucault 1954-1984, The New Press, New York, 2003, p. 330
Mayne, The Imagined Slum, pp. 175-180
Levi, Cristo, p. 80
‘Le donne mi vedevano guardare per le porte, m’invitavano a entrare: e ho visto, in quelle
grotte scure e puzzolenti, dei bambini sdraiati in terra, sotto delle coperte a brandelli, che
battevano i denti dalla febbre. Altri si trascinavano a stento, ridotti pelle e ossa dalla
dissenteria. Ne ho visti anche di quelli con le faccine di cera, mi parevano malati di qualcosa
di ancor peggio che la malaria, forse qualche malattia tropicale, forse il Kala Azar, la febbre
nera.’ Levi, Cristo, p. 80.
Ibid., p. 80
57
that these theatrical types were adapted from popular literature to illustrate the
hardship of slum living and thus promote the need for urban reforms to a mass
audience. The five characters were: the Woman, the Child, the Foreigner; the
Landlord, and the Inspector.80 The first two feature in Levi’s description of the
Sassi. Mayne contends that Woman was the main character that slum visitors
encountered in journalistic accounts. Most slumland descriptions were set
during the day when men would be at work. As a result women were the
spokespeople for the slum. There were two main types of women in slumland
depictions: the Good Woman and the Bad Woman. The Good Woman
personified the concept of the deserving poor. She was an industrious and
honest housewife but impoverished. Typically this character was portrayed as
keeping a clean home despite their surroundings. The implication was that with
improved housing conditions the Good Woman would be a respectable member
of society. The Good Woman was contrasted with her lazy neighbour the Bad
Woman. This figure personified urban degeneracy.81 The Bad Woman is
unkempt, sullen, and wizened in appearance. She was described as having loose
morals and being a drunkard.82 The female character in Cristo’s depiction of
Matera is the figure of the Good Woman. The women that Luisa Levi encounters
during her journey through the Sassi are described as malnourished,
impoverished and dejected yet at the same time ‘gentili’.83 The implication from
the text is that the women living in the Sassi are members of the deserving poor
who despite their surroundings live with grace and dignity.
80
81
82
83
Mayne, The Imagined Slum, pp. 189-190
Narratives of urban degeneracy were prevalent in nineteenth-century Western culture. See
pp. 136-137 below.
Ibid., pp. 190-192
Levi, Cristo, p. 80
58
The Child was another stock character used to create the divide between
notions of the modern city and the slum according to Mayne’s research. The
image of ill-clad children swarming together in large groups was a regular trope
in slumland depictions. The difficulties of slum living was communicated
through the description of slum children’s thin and haggard faces. Children,
Mayne contends, also personified the potential for future regeneration.
Descriptions of childhood innocence were common and contrasted with the
harshness of slum life. Mayne argues that reformers used these images to
mobilize community support for urban regeneration projects. The character of
the slum child appealed to the implied bourgeois reader’s emotions and echoed
tropes that were common in urban fiction, theatre and illustration.84 The
character of the Child is central to Carlo Levi’s depiction of Matera and appears
to draw on many of the literary techniques that Mayne has identified in his
research. The text creates the impression that the Sassi are overrun with packs
of seemingly feral children: ‘Di bambini ce n’era un’infinità. In quel caldo, in
mezzo alle mosche, nella polvere, spuntavano da tutte le parti, nudi del tutto e
coperti di stracci.’85 Moreover, the physical description of the Sassi’s child
population is used to convey the hardship of life in Matera’s cave homes: ‘altri
bambini incontravano, coi visini grinzosi come dei vecchi, e scheletriti per la
fame; i capelli pieni di pidocchi e di croste. Ma la maggior parte avevano delle
grandi pance gonfie, enormi, e la faccia gialla e patita per la malaria.’86 This
sense of indigence and disease is further heightened through a comparison
between the health conditions of Matera’s child population and that of Turin’s
84
85
86
Mayne, The Imagined Slum, pp. 199-203
Levi, Cristo, p. 80
Ibid., p. 80
59
urban poor. Luisa Levi notes that: ‘io non ho mai visto una tale immagine di
miseria: eppure sono abituata, è il mio mestiere, a vedere ogni giorno diecine di
bambini poveri, malati e maltenuti. Ma uno spettacolo come quello di ieri non
l’avevo mai neppure immaginato.’87 The text infers that Matera’s child poverty
is worse than the urban poverty of the modern city, in this case Turin. It was
arguably an attempt to create anger towards the Italian state’s neglect of
southern Italy in the implied middle-class reader.
Levi’s description of the Sassi presents them as Other to notions of the
modern city which were pervasive in the Western public sphere in the early
twentieth century. Matera’s cave homes are depicted as a symbol of Fascism’s
failure to resolve the southern question. A number of narratives prevalent in
slumland descriptions appear to have influenced this image. Arguably these
literary tropes were used because they would have been familiar to the implied
bourgeois and learned audience for whom Levi wrote his book. These
narratives were employed to create an image of poverty which would shock and
anger the reader. However, there is a clear tension between Levi’s depiction of
southern rural culture in Cristo and the image of Matera that the book presents.
Southern rural culture is described as a positive value system which needs to be
protected and Matera as the symbolic capital of this world. The image of the
Sassi that Levi presented, however, conveys the idea that the city is Other to
notions of modernity. This description implies that some form of intervention is
needed to improve the living conditions amongst Matera’s cave dwellers.
Although Levi advocated a system of autonomous local rule to resolve the
southern question, his description of the Sassi played a salient role in focusing
87
Ibid., p. 80
60
media and political attention on Matera. This process ultimately resulted in the
implementation of the risanamento programme for Matera in the 1950s from
above without the consultation of the local population.
The notion that Matera was a symbol of the Italian state’s continued
neglect of the Mezzogiorno, would be highly influential in subsequent
descriptions of the city. Images of Matera produced in media and political
sources would appropriate many of the same narrative threads that Levi
employed in his description of the Sassi. These concepts were important tools in
the discursive construction of Matera as a symbol of the southern question and
laid the foundation for notions of the city as a national shame which emerged in
the late 1940s. Writing about Cristo’s impact on post-war Matera, Anne Toxey
has argued that ‘following the descriptions in Levi’s book, Matera became
known as the “symbol of peasant misery,” the very emblem of the Southern
Question.’88 Her work, however, does not explore how and why this narrative
became part of the repertoire of stock images of the Mezzogiorno at both
political and intellectual levels in the post-war period. The next section, in
contrast, will examine this point in detail.
1.3 Cristo’s reception and impact
Einaudi published Cristo in June 1945 in three different series simultaneously:
Saggi, Testimonianze and Narratori contemporanei.89 Along with Gramsci’s
Lettere dal carcere, the book was one of the publishing house’s major successes
88
89
Toxey, ‘Reinventing the Cave’, p. 66
Falaschi, p. 470
61
in the immediate post-war period.90 Exact Italian sales figures for Cristo in its
first two years of publication were not forthcoming, but Einaudi’s quarterly
bulletin for winter 1946 showed that the book was already in its fifth
pressing.91 A letter by Giulio Einaudi to Franco Venturi dated the 25 September
1947 noted that the publishing house expected to have sold at least 40,000
copies of Cristo by the end of the year in contrast to 30,000 copies of Gramsci's
Lettere dal carcere.92 Gigliola De Donato and Sergio D’Amaro claim that Levi
took special care to ensure his book was distributed in southern Italy.93
Statistics on Italian literacy levels in the post-war period, however, suggest that
Cristo was primarily read by a learned and urban intellectual class during the
scope of this study.94
90
91
92
93
94
See Luisa Mangoni, ‘Da Cristo si è fermato a Eboli a L’Orologio: note su Carlo Levi e la casa
editrice Einaudi’, in Piero Brunello and Pia Vivarelli (eds.), Carlo Levi: gli anni fiorentini 19411945, Donzelli, Rome, 2003, p. 198. Moreover, a catalogue for the Rome based bookshop
Dedalo published on 15 January 1946 illustrates Cristo’s immediate success. It shows that
the book, which cost 180 lire, was the retailer’s best-selling product between December
1945 and January 1946. See ACS, FCL, busta 103, fasciolo 2415.
De Donato and D’Amaro, p. 184
Ibid., p. 198
The reliability of these claims, however, is questionable as no documentary evidence is given
to back them up. See De Donato and D’Amaro, p. 184.
Approximately 12.9 per cent of Italians were illiterate in 1951 with that figure almost double
in southern Italy and Islands for the same year at 24.8 per cent of the population. The same
set of statistics reveals that illiteracy rates were as high as 29 per cent in Basilicata, second
only to Calabria on 32 per cent. In addition, ISTAT statistics reveal that in 1951 only one per
cent of the Italian population, and just 0.9 per cent in the South and islands, had completed
third level education with 76.9 per cent of Italians leaving education after elementary school.
While illiteracy rates in Italy had dropped to 8.3 per cent by 1961, the figure in the South and
islands was still nearly twice the national average at 16.3 per cent. The diffusion of print
media in rural areas of Italy in the immediate post-war period was limited by what David
Forgacs has called ‘spatial inequality’ between city and country. The book selling market was
primarily restricted to areas of urban growth with the distribution of printed materials in
large parts of rural Italy virtually non-existent. The limited dissemination of books in rural
Italy was caused by a number of specific factors: lower literacy levels, a lack of disposable
income, a restricted amount of free time, and poor communications networks in many parts
of the peninsula. These statistics underline that the Italian reading public from 1945-1960
was predominately an urban intellectual class with disposable income and access to centres
of book publishing. See Ginsborg, p. 440 and David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial
Era 1880-1980. Cultural Industries, Politics and the Public, Manchester University Press,
Manchester, 1990, pp. 18-23.
62
The Fondazione Carlo Levi has collected a vast array of press cuttings on
Cristo from the period 1945-1950. These articles reveal that the book was a
commercial and a critical success in Italy during the scope of this study.
Moreover, they illustrate how Cristo became a cultural reference point for
articles addressing the renewed interest in the southern question. The book
was reviewed widely on its release in a vast number of publications, from
national to local newspapers, weekly and monthly publications as well as party
organs. Cristo was widely praised in the Italian press for its detailed and
sympathetic account of the Mezzogiorno. Levi’s depiction of southern rural
culture, in addition, was hailed as revelatory.95 Writing in the Turin-based
Christian Democrat daily Il Popolo Nuovo, Augusta Grosso Guidetti commented
that: ‘per molti di noi questo libro [Cristo] … ha rivelato, nella interpretazione e
trasfigurazione personale di un artista, un mondo di cui non sospettavamo
l’esistenza così vicino.’96 Moreover, Cristo was acclaimed for its role in
refocusing intellectual and political attention on the southern question
following the fall of Fascism. Particular merit was attributed to Levi’s ability to
spread the debate about the South beyond the limited readership of the various
political studies and social scientific reports previously published on the
subject.97 Owing to the book’s critical and commercial success, therefore, it
95
96
97
See Massimo Mila, ‘Esplorare l’Italia’, Giustizia e libertà, 27 December 1945, page number not
available; Tommaso Fiore, ‘La piccolo borghesia. Voilà l’ennemi’, La Gazzetta del
Mezzogiorno, 14 February 1946, page number not available; Giuseppe Petronio, ‘Cristo si è
fermato a Eboli’, La Nuova Europa, 24 February 1946, page number not available; Nera
Gnolli-Fuzzi, ‘Triste e cupa vita di un confinato politico’, La Voce Libera, 4 March 1946, page
number not available; Marcello Maestro, ‘Fra i libri’, Il Mondo, July 1946, page number not
available (Newspaper cuttings found in ACS, FCL, busta 103, fascicolo 2415).
Augusta Grosso Guidetti, ‘Cristo si è fermato a Eboli’, Il Popolo Nuovo, 21 April, 1946, page
number not available (ACS, FCL, Busta 103, Fascicolo 2415)
This point was expressed succinctly in L’Italia Nuova in May 1946: ‘Molti fiumi d’inchiostro
sono stati versati sulla “questione meridionale”, ma non esitiamo ad affermare che
quest’opera [Cristo] gioverà ad essa più di mille trattati di politica e di economia.’ See ‘Cristo
63
became a cultural reference point for the renewed debate regarding the
southern question amongst members of post-war Italy’s public sphere. This
point is reflected by the fact that Cristo’s enigmatic title was routinely cited and
recycled in various articles and publications which focused their attention on
southern Italy’s economic, social and political conditions after 1945.98
Furthermore, Cristo enjoyed relative commercial and critical success in
the USA and the UK during the scope of this study. This had a direct impact on
foreign interest in Matera at intellectual, journalistic and academic levels. 99 The
book’s American edition was released on 18 April 1947 by Farrar, Straus and
Company. It sold 13,785 copies in its first year and had had reached an
estimated 96,285 by 1950. Cassell published the book in the UK in 1948.100
Russell King has noted the substantial impact that Cristo made at an intellectual
and academic level in both the US and the UK during the scope of this study. The
book’s Italian edition was widely used in Italian departments in the Englishspeaking world. The English translation was read more as a document of
southern Italy’s social and cultural topography than the diary of an internal
98
99
100
si è fermato a Eboli’, L’Italia Nuova. La voce dei giovani, 27 May 1946, page number not
available. See also Antonio Romano, ‘Cristo si è fermato a Eboli’, Il Risorgimento, 22 August
1946, page number not available; Piero Gadda Conti, ‘Un libro premiato. “Cristo si è fermato
a Eboli”, Il Popolo, 8 March 1946, page number not available; ‘Aspetti della questione
meridionale’, Il Giornale del Popolo, 22 April 1946, page number not available (ACS, FCL,
busta 103, fascicolo 2415).
For example Giuseppe Isnardi, ‘La questione meridionale. Cristo si è fermato a Eboli’, Libertà,
1 September 1946; Edoardo Rossi, ‘La via del Mezzogiorno. Cristo al di là di Eboli’, Avanti!,
23 November 1946; Raimondo Collino Pansa, ‘Un formidabile problema: la questione
meridionale’, Paese Libero; 27 January 1947; Giuseppe Saragat, ‘Il problema del
Mezzogiorno’, L’Umanità, 22 January 1947 (Newspaper cuttings found in ACS, FCL, busta
103).
For example Vincent Barnett (the head of the European Cooperation Administration in Italy
which administered Marshall Plan funding) cited Cristo as ‘a very widely-read’ book in the
post-war period which focused foreign attention on southern Italy and Matera in particular.
Interview by Eric Christenson and Linda Christenson with Dr. Vincent Barnett (European
Cooperation Administration Program Chief Italy), August 19 1993.
Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, ‘Christ Stopped at Eboli: Fortunes of an American Translation’, in
Joseph Farrell (ed.), The Voices of Carlo Levi, Peter Lang, Bern, 2007, p. 188
64
political exile. As a result Cristo became a reference point for researchers and
intellectuals interested in studying southern Italy and its so-called ‘peasant
culture’.101 Levi’s book drew a number of foreign academics and journalists to
Basilicata and Matera in the 1940s and 1950s. These included the sociologist
George Peck, the political scientist Edward Banfield, the photographer Henri
Cartier-Bresson and the philosopher Friedrich George Friedmann.102 This
international interest appears to have fed back into the sense amongst Italy’s
public sphere that the country was being watched and judged by overseas
visitors and commentators.103
Italian reaction to Cristo’s political content was divided along ideological
lines. Predictably Action Party and Giustizia e libertà affiliated publications and
writers agreed with Levi’s rejection of state intervention from above, the
distance he perceived between the southern rural poor and the Italian state,
and his call for self-government to resolve the southern question.104 In contrast
Russell King, ‘Basilicata Anglofona’, in Lida Viganoni (ed.), Lo sviluppo possibile. Basilicata
oltre il Sud, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli, 1997, p. 444
102 For a summary of the different overseas researchers who worked in Basilicata during the
post-war period see King, ‘Basilicata Anglofona’, p. 443-458. For an overview of George
Peck’s work in Basilicata see Gilberto-Antonio Marselli, ‘Sociologia del Vecchio e Nuovo
Mezzogiorno’, in Storia del Mezzogiorno, Volume XIII, Dal fascismo alla Repubblica, Edizioni
del Sole, Napoli, 1991, pp. 218-219; Maria Minicuci, ‘Antropologi e Mezzogiorno’, Meridiana,
(2003), no. 48-49, pp. 139-174; and Eugenio Imbriani, ‘Gli studi di comunità in Basilicata’,
Studi etno-antropologici e sociologici, vol. 25 (1997), pp. 24-25. For an overview of Edward
Banfield’s controversial research at Chiaromonte and the ensuing academic debate see
Edward Banfield, Le basi morali di una società arretrata, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1976; Gilberto A.
Marselli, ‘Sociologi nordamericani e società contadina italiana: a proposito del libro di
Banfield’, Quaderni di Sociologia Rurale, (1962), no. 1, pp. 109-130; Alessandro Pizzorno,
‘Amoral familism and historical marginality’, Community Development, (1966), no. 15-16, pp.
55-66; John Davis, ‘Morals and backwardness’, Comparative Studies in Society and History,
vol. 12 (1970), no. 3, pp. 340-353; and Edward Banfield, ‘Reply to Davis’, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, vol. 12 (1970), no. 3, pp. 354-359. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s trips
to Basilicata in the 1950s and 1970s are profiled, along with a selection of his photos, in
Rocco Mazzarone and Giuseppe Appella (eds.), La Lucania di Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edizioni
della Cometa, Rome, 1999. Friedmann’s work is examined in section 3.2 below.
103 This point is examined in detail in section 2.3 below.
104 Massimo Mila, ‘Esplorare l’Italia’, Giustizia e libertà, 27 December 1945, page number not
available; Vittore Branca, ‘Lucania magica e desolata’, La Nazione del Popolo, 21 February
101
65
the PCI rejected Levi’s political vision. Post-war cultural criticism in Communist
Party circles was marked by the adoption ‘of a cultural value system centred
upon realism and collective solidarity and a corresponding critique of
“decadence” and mass culture.’105 Levi was accused of romanticizing and
idolizing the southern rural poor as well as failing to offer a concrete
explanation for the socio-economic reasons behind southern Italy’s
backwardness in comparison to the North. PCI critics completely rejected the
claim that southern society could be rebuilt through the positive values of the
civiltà contadina.
These points are exemplified in Carlo Muscetta’s critique of Cristo in
Fiera Letteraria in 1946 and his review of L’Orologio from 1950 which was
published in the PCI organ L’Unità. Muscetta criticized Levi’s depiction of
southern Italy as ‘un mondo senza Storia, chiuso alla Libertà e alla Ragione’
which ‘tende ad allontanare il Mezzogiorno più che l’India e la Cina,’at the very
moment in which southern Italy ‘sollecitato da opposti interessi reazionari e
democratici, tende ad uscire dalla sua immobilità, ed è politicamente e
socialmente vivo, in agitazione e in movimento per avvicinarsi e ricongiungersi
all’“altra” Italia’.106 The Communist intellectual and parliamentarian Mario
105
106
1946, page number not available; Tommaso Fiore, ‘La piccolo borghesia. Voilà l’ennemi’, La
Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 14 February 1946, page number not available (ACS, FCL, busta
103, fascicolo 2415).
Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, p. 159
See Carlo Muscetta, Realismo, neorealismo, controrealismo, Garzanti, Milan, 1976, p. 60.
Notably Muscetta worked in Einaudi’s Rome office in the 1940s and had been actively
involved in publishing the first edition of Cristo. Moreover, Muscetta had been a member of
the PdA until March 1946 before joining the PCI later that same year. He was a personal
acquaintance of Levi’s and appears in L’Orologio as the figure of Moneta. See Leonardo Sacco,
L’Orologio della Repubblica. Carlo Levi e il caso Italia con 37 disegni politici di Carlo Levi, Argo,
Lecce, 1996, pp. 7-19 & 67-73.
66
Alicata was even harsher in his criticism of Levi.107 Writing in Cronache
Meridionali in 1954, Alicata branded Levi as the leading exponent of a school of
meridionalismo which ‘vorrebbe che non solo “Cristo” ma anche il moderno
pensiero critico si fermasse a Eboli.’108 Furthermore, the article accused Levi of
failing to historicize southern Italy’s social backwardness and thus being unable
to provide a coherent solution to the southern question.109 Alicata rejected
Levi’s theory of poltical autonomy based on the positive values identified in
southern rural culture. In fact Alicata contested the idea of a homogenous
southern rural culture. Instead he claimed that there were a myriad of different
cultures whose historical origins and social development needed to be studied
individually.110
Despite their ideological misgivings over Levi’s vision of southern Italy
and proposed solution for the southern question, the PCI appropriated his
image of Matera as a symbol of the southern question and Other to notions of
modernity into its political propaganda. They used the city to denounce social
conditions in the entire Mezzogiorno and promote the need for modernization
Mario Alicata was also a personal acquaintance of Carlo Levi and appeared in L’Orologio as
Nardelli. See Sacco, L’Orologio della Repubblica, pp. 175-196.
108 Mario Alicata, ‘Il meridionalismo non si può fermare a Eboli’, in Mario Alicata (ed.), Scritti
letterari, Mondadori, Milan, 1968, p. 314
109 Alicata claimed that Levi’s book had had an insidious influence on subsequent writers who
focused their attention on southern rural culture. In particular Alicata critiqued Rocco
Scotellaro’s Contadini del Sud and path-breaking intellectual and PCI member Ernesto De
Martino’s research for failing to historicize the community’s they studied and in the case of
De Martino for abandoning the PCI’s ideological position vis-à-vis the southern question. The
case of De Martino is of particular interest as the Neapolitan intellectual had drawn heavily
on Gramsci’s Osservazioni sul folclore in his own work. As a result De Martino outlined a
distinction between folklore tradizionale and folklore progressivo in his writing with the
latter defined as a manifestation of the southern rural poor’s nascent social consciousness.
Moreover, De Martino had criticized Levi’s view of southern rural culture for many of the
same reasons as Muscetta and Alicata. See Ernesto De Martino, ‘Intorno a una polemica.
Postilla a considerazioni storiche sul lamento funebre lucano’, in Carla Pasquinelli (ed.),
Antropologia culturale e questione meridionale: Ernesto De Martino e il dibattito sul mondo
popolare subalterno negli anni 1948-1955, La Nuova Italia Editrice, Florence, 1977, p. 223
and Ernesto De Martino, ‘Il folklore progressivo’, in Pasquinelli, p. 144.
110 Alicata, ‘Il meridionalismo’, pp. 315-322.
107
67
and agrarian reform in southern Italy. This point is illustrated in the depiction
of Matera in the Communist weekly magazine Vie Nuove.111 On 6 October 1946
the magazine featured an unsigned editorial entitled ‘Matera Città dei Sassi’ in
which Matera was dubbed ‘la più disgraziata città di Italia.’ 112 The image of the
Sassi that Vie Nuove presented clearly evoked Levi’s description in Cristo.
Matera’s cave homes were described as ‘abitazioni trogloditiche, primitive’ in
which ‘brulica la popolazione dei contadini e degli operai la quale, quando torna
dal lavoro, è costretta ad abitare in promiscuità tra uomini, donne e animali.’ 113
Furthermore, the city was described as a symbol of the entire Mezzogiorno:
‘Ecco qua Matera: campeggia in questa pagina col suo biancore calcinato, i suoi
sassi di calvario. Le sue pene antiche e recenti, il suo doloroso risentimento.
Matera: l’Italia Meridionale.’114 In contrast to Levi’s call for autonomous local
government to solve the southern question, however, Vie Nuove advocated a
programme of direct state intervention in line with PCI policy. Accordingly, the
editorial called for ‘un progetto concreto per la demolizione dei “Sassi” e la
costruzione di nuove case’ which should be realized ‘attraverso un fattivo
intervento dello Stato.’115 Notably the description of the Sassi featured in Cristo
was reprinted in Vie Nuove under the heading ‘La Testimonianza di uno
111
112
113
114
115
Vie Nuove was a glossy weekly magazine (rotocalco) which juxtaposed features on social and
political current affairs with photos of film stars and articles on popular culture. Although it
started out as a pedagogical publication intended to provide a Communist counterpart to the
Famiglia Cristiana, Vie Nuove developed into a more commercial magazine in an attempt to
compete with its rivals Epoca and Oggi. Furthermore, Vie Nuove was a successful publication
within the relevant confines of Italian Communist subculture. Despite being sold exclusively
through subscription or by party volunteers, the weekly magazine had a print run of 30,000
in 1946 peaking at 350,000 in 1952. See David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture
and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War, Indiana University Press, Bloomington,
2007, pp. 267-268.
‘Matera Città dei Sassi’, Vie Nuove, 6 October 1946, p. 3
Ibid., p. 3
Gianni Puccini, ‘Nuovo corso per il Mezzogiorno’, Vie Nuove, 6 October 1946, p. 3
‘Matera Città dei Sassi’, Vie Nuove, 6 October 1946, p. 3
68
scrittore.’116 Presenting Levi’s image of Matera out of context with the rest of
the book, specifically his rejection of direct state intervention, rendered it part
of the PCI’s catalogue of stock images of southern backwardness. As a result, the
image of Matera presented in Cristo was placed within the context of the
Communist Party’s call for redevelopment of the Mezzogiorno through a
process of economic modernization from above.117
Examining local reaction to Levi’s book in the post-war period it is clear
that Cristo was generally viewed as an attack on southern society. The idea that
southern rural culture was a positive value system which could act as a
potential antidote to Western civilization’s failings appears to have had little
resonance amongst critics in Basilicata and Matera. Instead local commentators
believed that the book was a denigration of the South. This suggests that they
were reacting as much to opinions about the book in Italy’s public sphere as to
the actual text itself. Contemporary regional press reviews offer an insight into
local middle-class attitudes towards Cristo. Although the book’s artistic merit
was widely praised, Levi was accused of denigrating the region and its
inhabitants. Cristo’s commercial and critical success seems to have added to this
sense of injustice. Levi was charged with disseminating a distorted picture of
Basilicata to the wider world on the one hand, while commercially exploiting
the region’s poverty on the other. Writing in Matera’s weekly Il Gazzettino on 7
116
117
See Puccini, p. 3 and ‘Matera Città dei Sassi’, Vie Nuove, 6 October 1946, p. 3.
The image of Matera as Other to ideas of modernity was central to the PCI propaganda film
Nel Mezzogiorno qualcosa è cambiato. Carlo Lizzani’s documentary presents Matera as a
symbol of the southern question. The Sassi are utilized to denounce the abject poverty of the
entire South and promote the need for land reform. See Carlo Lizzani, Nel Mezzogiorno
qualcosa è cambiato (Italy, 1949).
69
October 1946, the paper’s editor Tommaso Calulli took it upon himself to
summarize local reaction to Cristo:
Il lancio iniziale di ‘Cristo si è fermato a Eboli’ ha fatto piovere su questo
povero mondo Lucano, da tutte le parti del mondo, insulti, parole di
pseudo comprensione, incorraggiamenti mistificatori, spregiudicati
inaccettabili, consigli e suggerimenti. La nostra povera Lucania, sempre
odiosamente bistrattata, è stata proiettata violentamente, di punto in
bianco alla ribalta di una celebrità assolutamente non sognata nè
tantomeno ambita.118
In an attempt to gauge local reaction to Levi’s book, Calulli offered the pages of
Il Gazzettino to any disgruntled readers wishing to air their grievances towards
Levi as well as anyone willing to defend his book.119 Amongst those who took up
Calulli’s proposal was Luigi Gambalone, the man upon whom Levi had based the
figure of Gagliano’s Fascist mayor Don Luigi. Gambalone contested his portrayal
in the book and described Cristo as ‘una serie di quadri belli deturpati’ in which
Levi had managed to ‘disprezzare la nostra purezza di vita semplice ed onesta e
a sentire il nostalgico ricordo del vizio e della menzogna.’120 Local priest and
historian of Matera Marcello Morelli also expressed his displeasure about Levi’s
depiction of Basilicata in Il Gazzettino. He described the book as ‘non
documento d’una realtà obiettiva’, but rather a ‘libro fantastica di pura arte, cioè
libro in cui tutto sotto l’occhio deformatore d’un moderno creatore di miti si
118
119
120
Tommaso Calulli, ‘Vogliamo conoscere la vera Lucania’, Il Gazzettino. Economic commerciale
della Lucania, 7 October 1946, p. 1
Ibid., p. 1
Luigi Garambone, Il Gazzettino. Economico commercial della Lucania, 14 October 1946, page
number not available (ACS, FCL, busta 103). In an interview from 1956, Gambalone was
more forgiving of Levi’s portrait putting it down to artistic interpretation. However, he
claimed that Levi’s apparent betrayal of trust had hurt Aliano’s residents: ‘Valore letterario a
parte, il libro più che ingiusto lo hanno trovato indiscreto … una forma di scorettezza … che
disturba un poco l’antica e severa civiltà di questa gente’. Ugo Lombardo, ‘Tra l’autore e i
personaggi non corre buon sangue’, Visto, 21 August 1954, page number not available (ACS,
FCL, busta 104).
70
altera e prende proporzione mostruose.’ 121 Morelli concluded that ‘i lucani a
leggerlo [Cristo] soffrono come d’uno schiaffo dato loro in pieno viso.’122 Even a
more analytical local review such as Alfredo Toscano’s booklet ‘Dopo aver letto
“Cristo si è fermato a Eboli” di Carlo Levi’, which engaged with the book’s
political dimension and critiqued Levi’s appraisal of the southern question,
concluded that he had sullied Basilicata and southern Italy’s reputation in the
eyes of northern Italian and foreign readers despite the author’s noble
intentions.123
Regional politicians added their voices to the chorus of disapproval
towards Cristo. Interviewed in 1947, Communist deputy Luigi De Filpo
described Levi as ‘il più cinico e temerario imprenditore di trasfigurazioni
liriche e pittoriche dei tempi moderni … egli è un affossatore e la sua arte
maligna e sottile, ha un portentoso potere nebbiogeno.’124 When asked his
opinion about Levi’s book in the same article the Christian Democrat
parliamentarian Emilio Colombo replied that: ‘Cristo non si è fermato a Eboli …
nell’anima del più oscuro dei nostri contadini tanta speranza, tanta volontà di
lottare, tanto attaccamento alla propria terra, alla famiglia, alla onestà della vita,
121
122
123
124
Marcello Morelli, ‘Di Carlo Levi e del suo libro’, Il Gazzettino. Economico commerciale della
Lucania, 21, October, 1946, page number not available (ACS, FCL, busta 103)
Ibid., (ACS, FCL, busta 103)
In his review of Cristo, Toscano claimed that: ‘L’A. ha voluto, con questo libro, fare
principalmente dell’arte, e, dove arte c’è, si applauda. Ma quando pensiamo che al
settentrione d’Italia si vede nella Lucania e in tutto il Mezzogiorno una terra di cafoni, di
terroni, di ignoranti, di retrogradi, possiamo immaginare l’impressione che produrrà ai
lettori del nord o meglio “dell’al di là”, a quegli “dei [sic] stranieri”.’ Alfredo Toscano, Dopo
aver letto “Cristo si è fermato a Eboli” di Carlo Levi, Angelo Lodeserto, Taranto, 1946, p. 10
(ACS, FCL, busta 103).
De Filpo’s criticism of Levi has undertones of anti-Semitism with the PCI deputy concluding
that ‘poiché [Levi] mostra tanto ardore e tanta pena per i paesi tagliati fuori dalla
predicazione evangelica, se ne torni in Palestina, la patria dei suoi maggiori.’ Giuseppe
Selvaggi, ‘Un paese aspetta’, Il Sud, 19 October 1947, page number not available (ACS, FCL,
busta 103)
71
tanta tenacia fede in Dio.’125 Local and regional reaction to Cristo arguably
reflects Giovanni Russo’s claim that many of the book’s critics were angered
because they recognized themselves in the negative depiction of southern
Italy’s petit bourgeoisie.126 However, it also suggests that in many cases local
figures were reacting to the image of the South they believed the book had
disseminated among Italy’s public sphere rather than the actual text itself. The
implication is that Cristo played a salient role in constructing and spreading
notions of the backward South in the post-war period. In the context of Matera
and the Sassi it is clear from press coverage and the numerous reports
produced in the context of the first special law that Levi’s brief description
played a salient role in focusing media and political attention on the city. For
example, writing in 1953 about the rediscovery of the southern question in the
immediate post-war period, the Commissione di studio sulla comunità di Matera
attributed the intense political and media focus on Matera to the city’s
description in Cristo. It claimed that ‘in particolare la grave condizione edilizia e
sociale della città di Matera si era già imposta da tempo all’attenzione
dell’opinione pubblica italiana: dopo le drammatiche, rivelatrici pagine di Carlo
Levi nel “Cristo si è fermato a Eboli”, fu nel 1949 che questo interesse cominciò
a concretarsi in forma di programme di intervento.’127 But Levi did more than
125
126
127
Ibid., (ACS, FCL, busta 103)
‘È facile comprendere … come il libro sia stato accolto con diffidenza e quasi con rancore in
certi ambienti, fino a condannarlo come cattivo e malevolo. Molti sono stati colpiti, molti
hanno visto con stupore il loro vero volto riflesso nel volto di qualcuno di quei personaggi
descritti dall’autore e hanno avuto paura e meraviglia che si fosse riuscito a sollevare la
maschera secolare della loro ipocrisia e a mettere a nudo la cancrena. Ma la calunnia di Carlo
Levi, nemico del povero terrone del sud non merita di essere raccolta. Carlo Levi prova non
solo carità ma amore per questa umanità derelitta, abbandonata da secoli nelle mani della
miseria, della malaria e della morte.’ See Giovanni Russo, ‘Un incontro in Lucania’, La Voce,
18 February 1946, page number not available (ACS, FCL, busta 103).
See Commissione di studio sulla comunità di Matera, Matera: uno studio, Istituzione
Nazionale di Urbanistica and UNRRA-CASAS, 1953, p. 3.
72
merely focus attention on Matera. He provided two concepts which would
directly influence subsequent descriptions of the city post-1945. Matera as
Other to notions of modernity and a symbol of the southern question were
recurring tropes found in mass media and political depictions of the
Mezzogiorno during the scope of this study. These two concepts would come to
dominate how Matera was studied and imagined in the post-war era and
ultimately influenced the course of the city’s social and urban history.
Conclusion
Speaking in 2012 about the media and political interest in Matera in the
immediate post-war period the journalist and historian Leonardo Sacco argued
that ‘c’è da dire che Matera era stata “inventata” da Carlo Levi, col Cristo.’128 The
book’s commercial and critical success undoubtedly played a salient role in
focusing political, intellectual and media attention on Matera from the late1940s onwards in the context of renewed interest in the southern question.
Levi’s bestseller was invariably cited as the source text from which political and
intellectual interest in the Sassi arose during the scope of this study. But as
Sacco implies, the book did more than just focus attention on Matera. It created
the notion that the city was representative of southern rural culture, an idea
which became familiar to Italy’s book-reading population and political class.
Levi’s depiction of Matera, however, was removed from the political context
within which it was written, i.e. the values of the Resistance and his aspirations
for a state which would make a clean break from Italy’s Liberal and Fascist past.
Cristo was released in the same month that Action Party leader, Ferruccio Parri,
128
Federico Bilò and Ettore Vadini (eds.), Matera e Adriano Olivetti. Conversazioni con Albino
Sacco e Leonardo Sacco, Fondazione Adriano Olivetti, Ivrea, 2013, p. 81
73
became Prime Minister of the post-war coalition government. The hopes of Levi
and the PdA, however, would last just five months. Parri’s government was
undermined by the political manoeuvrings of the PCI and the Partito Socialista
Italiano di Unità Proletaria, as well as by internal divisions within his own party
- which ultimately dissolved in 1946.129 Despite Levi’s opposition to direct state
intervention and his call for autonomous local government in the South, the PCI
and the DC appropriated his image of Matera to promote policies of state
intervention from above. Levi had presented the image of a not entirely
undifferentiated, immobile and pre-modern Mezzogiorno. Matera was depicted
as its symbolic capital. Levi had outlined a programme for the Mezzogiorno’s
rebirth based on the values he perceived in southern rural poor. In contrast, the
PCI viewed the idealization of rural culture as a potential obstacle to southern
Italy’s social and economic development. Moreover, the DC and the PCI
constructed the image of a South incapable of generating its own renewal and
thus in need of state intervention. Images of Matera played an important role in
this process. The model of the city that Levi had created in Cristo was
transferred into party propaganda to suit the rapidly changing political terrain
of the post-war period and had concrete effects at a political level. In political
and media sources Matera became a symbol of all that was wrong with the
South. This idea influenced the course of the city’s post-war history. The
concept that Matera was emblematic of southern agriculture shaped the
provisions of government intervention in the city in the 1950s. Generic
129
Levi outlined his disillusionment over the collapse of PdA in his post-war novel L’Orologio
(1950) in which he lamented the return to power of what he considered Italy’s ancien
régime. For a summary of the PdA’s demise see Ginsborg, p. 89. For a discussion of
L’Orologio’s historical, biographical and political context see Sacco, L’Orologio della
Repubblica.
74
development models for the entire Mezzogiorno were applied to a distinct type
of agricultural economy. Furthermore, the image of Matera as Other to ideas of
modernity was the starting point for notions that the city constituted a national
shame. This narrative became a commonplace in Italian media and political
circles between 1948 and 1952 and would influence the decision to implement
special legislation for the city in the 1950s. The next chapter will examine this
process in detail.
75
Chapter 2: Matera and national shame
Seicentomila abitanti della Basilicata vivono tuttora in condizioni di vita
inferiori a quelle dei popoli africani, come prova, dandone la misura, la
sempre più grave vergogna dei “sassi” materani ... in queste tane vivono
in media sei esseri umani per vano, con punte spaventose, insieme a
muli, asini, maiali, pecore, oltre a tutti gli animali di bassa corte. Queste
sono, dunque, le abitazioni che stanno ancora là a denotare da quanta
miseria sia afflitto il nostro paese e di quanta vergogna sia ricoperta
questa vostra civiltà occidentale di cui ci parlate continuamente.1
The above quotation is taken from a parliamentary intervention in 1951 by
Michele Bianco, a PCI deputy for Potenza. It is just one of the numerous
expressions of national shame that were generated in the context of post-war
Matera. The notion that the city constituted a national shame gained a wide
discursive currency in Italian political and public spheres in the immediate
post-war period.2 In the early 1950s an estimated 15,000 people were living in
troglodyte dwellings carved out of limestone which, in many cases, had no
running water or sewage system. Families shared their airless subterranean
homes with farm animals. These distinctive cave homes were brought to
national and international attention by their brief, yet evocative, description in
Carlo Levi’s post-war best seller Cristo si è fermato a Eboli and the resultant
media interest in the Sassi. Expressions of shame over the living conditions
witnessed at Matera in contemporary newspaper articles and official reports
were almost universally couched in the terminology of nationhood. In the
context of the post-war reconstruction effort and a country facing a severe
1
2
Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, 27 February 1951, pp. 26560-26562
The term shame is used to translate the Italian word vergogna. Although it can also be
translated as embarrassment or disgrace, Silvana Patriarca notes that ‘according to the
Oxford English Dictionary, the pre-Teutonic root of shame has a meaning similar to that of
the romance languages as it refers to the act of covering or looking for cover.’ See Patriarca,
‘A Patriotic Emotion’, p. 148, n. 5. Sara Ahmed also briefly examines the origins of the term
shame in the English language in Ahmed, p. 104.
76
housing shortage, Matera’s slums were branded a national shame. The Sassi
became a symbol of Italy’s southern question which had once again become an
important issue in mainstream political discourse. Tackling this so-called
vergogna nazionale took on symbolic importance in the context of the new
Italian Republic and the start of the Cold War as Communism and Christian
Democracy looked to lay claim to notions of national identity.
There have been countless books and articles published on Matera’s
post-war history. To date, however, no study has examined the patriotic
narratives generated in the context of the Sassi in detail. The question of why
overcrowded cave homes were seen as an affront to notions of the Italian nation
at that specific moment in history has remained unanswered. This is all the
more surprising as post-war Matera provides an ideal opportunity for
examining the workings of patriotism in a country that is generally considered
to ‘lack’ national identity. These patriotic narratives were produced at a point in
time when Italian nationalism was considered to be in crisis following twenty
years of Fascist rule and the turmoil of foreign occupation and civil war. The
expressions of national shame that Matera’s cave homes generated suggest that
Italian patriotism may have been more prominent in the immediate post-war
period than previously thought. This chapter aims to examine the workings of
these emotional scenarios, the social and political context that shaped them, the
image of the Italian nation they created, and their impact on Matera’s social and
urban history in the 1950s. First it will sketch the historical milieu within which
discourses of national shame were produced. Next it will outline a theoretical
framework for examining national shame drawing on recent scholarship from
77
the history of emotions and the history of nationalism. Finally it will examine a
representative sample from the numerous expressions of national shame in the
context of post-war Matera found in the Italian press and official documents.
2.1 Historical context
The expressions of national shame examined below were produced in the
context of the developing Cold War with the Christian Democrats and the Italian
Communist Party looking to establish themselves as the country’s two main
political parties. The Truman Doctrine was announced in March 1947 with the
European Recovery Programme, better known as the Marshall Plan, established
in June of the same year. In May 1947 the Italian Prime Minister, Alcide De
Gasperi, expelled both the Communist and Socialist parties from the Constituent
Assembly, the immediate post-war coalition government. The DC leader’s
strategy paid off and on 18 April 1948, following a bitter election campaign
punctuated by Cold War propaganda, his party achieved a landslide victory
collecting 48.9 per cent of the vote.3 The result marked the division of Italian
political and cultural life into two opposing poles and the beginning of almost
fifty years of political domination in Italy by the DC. Concurrently, the PCI
emerged as the dominant party on the Left. As a result from the late 1940s
onwards the DC controlled the ‘key state cultural apparatuses: broadcasting,
censorship and the body responsible for the performance arts and
entertainments, the Sottosegretario per lo Spettacolo.’4 Conversely, influenced
by the Gramscian strategy of attempting to penetrate all aspects of Italian civil
3
4
For a summary of the Italian political terrain in the immediate post-war period see Ginsborg,
pp. 112-120.
The culture of the Left and specifically the PCI is outlined in Forgacs and Gundle, pp. 259-270
and Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, p. 105.
78
life, the PCI built its own independent cultural networks including party
newspapers, publishers, libraries and the Case del Popolo.5 As a result, images of
Matera and the South produced in the party press were shaped by the ideology
of the publication in which they appeared as well as developments in the Italian
political landscape in the immediate post-war period.
Matera was one of the key images that the PCI and the DC used to
promote their distinctive political strategies in southern Italy. Both parties
proposed policies for the South based on modernization through public works
programmes and industrialization. These reforms were promoted and justified
through images of the Mezzogiorno disseminated through various channels of
party propaganda, from print to newsreels and documentaries. Moreover, the
different souths that the PCI and DC presented in print and film were filtered
through the southern question paradigm and featured a number of shared
characteristics. Southern Italy was depicted as economically backward in
comparison to the North; it was a vast impoverished territory where society
was still characterized by the residue of feudalism. In short, the South was a
problem that needed to be solved. To justify the proposal of reform policies in
the Mezzogiorno, Italy’s two main parties had to illustrate the perceived
economic divide that existed between North and South. The Sassi became one of
the primary sources for portraying the Mezzogiorno’s economic and social
problems in this context during the immediate post-war years.
Carlo Levi’s description of the Sassi in Cristo si è fermato a Eboli and its
widespread dissemination directly influenced the political focus on Matera. The
5
Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, p. 154
79
town received an unprecedented amount of political and media attention in the
post-war period, but Levi’s image of Matera and the South was removed from
the political context within which it was created.6 His depiction of Matera as the
capitale contadina and the embodiment of southern poverty provided post-war
Italy’s two main parties with a ready-made cultural reference point which could
be adapted to suit their specific ideological needs. Accordingly, representations
of Matera and the Sassi produced in the party press reflected political attitudes
towards southern Italy as well as the specific historical context within which
they were created. Concurrently these images further cemented and
disseminated the concept of Matera as a symbol of the southern question.
The Italian Communist Party adopted a two pronged strategy in the
South: first, it espoused a policy of economic modernization from above for
southern Italy. This was to be achieved through a programme of public
investment and agrarian reform with the aim of resolving the perceived
economic divide between North and South.7 Second, it promoted the
transformation of southern society through the political mobilization of the
southern rural poor.8 The aim of this second strategy was to create class
consciousness amongst southern Italy’s agricultural workforce.9 In order to
achieve these aims the PCI established the Movimento per la rinascita del
6
7
8
9
See Chapter 1, pp. 38-51.
Sidney Tarrow, Peasant Communism in Southern Italy, Yale University Press, London, 1967,
p. 256
From 1945 to 1962 the Italian Communist Party instigated what Sidney Tarrow has dubbed
‘an organizational revolution’ in southern Italy. It introduced the party section, the
secretariat, and the secondary association into Italy’s southern regions and produced an
unprecedented level of political participation at a popular level. Party membership grew
from 400,000 in 1944 to 2,245,000 by 1947 (278,000 to 430,000 during the same period in
southern Italy). See Tarrow, p. 198.
Percy Allum, ‘The South and National Politics, 1945-50’, in Stewart Joseph Woolf (ed.), The
Rebirth of Italy 1943-50, Longman Group Limited, London, 1972, p. 100
80
Mezzogiorno in 1947. This was an agglomeration of provincial and regional
assemblies organized to push for land reform legislation and build party
consensus in southern Italy. It organized demonstrations, regional assizes and
coordinated the election campaign of 1948 in the South.10
At a national level the PCI pursued a strategy of progressive democracy
in the immediate post-war period. This policy entailed the party’s continued
participation in government and the maintenance of its alliance with the DC as
part of the post-war Constituent Assembly. However, this position changed
following the expulsion of the Left in May 1947 and the start of the Cold War. As
Claudia Petraccone notes: ‘la fine dei governi di unità nazionale spinse i
communisti a considerare nuovamente la questione meridionale come uno
strumento di lotta politica.’11 Following the defeat of the Popular Front (a
coalition between the Italian Communist and Socialist Parties) in the 1948
general election, the PCI focused its southern strategy on the political
mobilization of rural workers. Despite the failure of the coalition between
socialists and communists to challenge the DC at a national level, the Popular
Front had increased its vote in southern Italy.12 Consequently, the southern
question was seen as a fundamental component of the PCI’s political strategy
for building consensus in southern Italy. The South’s renewal was to be
achieved through agricultural reform. The Communist Party viewed the feudal
residues of the latifondi as the primary cause of southern Italy’s economic
stagnation.13 According to the PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti, the party needed to
10
11
12
13
Petraccone, p. 215-216
Ibid., p. 220
Ginsborg, p. 35
Tarrow, pp. 256-257
81
create a political climate in the South which would allow the southern working
class to ‘sottrarla all’influenza dei gruppi reazionari che ancora la tengono sotto
il loro potere e dirigerla nella lotta per il benessere e per il bene di tutto il
paese.’14 In order to achieve this aim the PCI sought to organize the southern
rural poor according to the framework set out by Gramsci in Alcuni temi della
quistione meridionale (1926), i.e. the unification of the northern proletariat and
the southern peasantry under the auspices of the Party.15 Togliatti had outlined
this strategy in the pages of Rinascita in 1944: ‘incominciamo con l’organizzare
seriamente queste masse, tanto in formazioni politiche quanto in formazioni
economiche più larghe (sindacati, leghe contadine ecc.) e appoggiandoci su
queste forze diamo battaglia per la rinascita politica dell’Italia meridionale.’ 16
Following the renewal of the peasant land occupations in the winter of 1949,
the PCI organized the Assise per la rinascita del Mezzogiorno which were held on
3-4 December 1949 at four different venues: Salerno, Crotone, Bari and Matera.
Moreover, in rural areas Land Committees and Consulate popolari were
established. The aim of these initiatives was to coordinate the numerous land
occupations of 1949-1950 in Calabria, Puglia, Campania and Basilicata in an
attempt to consolidate what had started out as spontaneous movements and
push for agrarian reform in the South.17
The PCI’s strategy of organizing the southern rural poor through the
renewed occupation of the latifondi was a success in the short term. The DC
14
15
16
17
Giorgio Amendola, Gli anni della Repubblica, Editori Riuniti, Rome, 1976, p. 283
For Gramsci’s discussion of the alliance between northern workers and the southern
peasantry see David Forgacs (ed.), The Antonio Gramsci Reader. Selected Writings 1916-1935,
Lawrence and Wishart Limited, London, 1988, pp. 120; 172-173; and 184-185.
Amendola, Gli anni della Repubblica, p. 283
See Petraccone, pp. 215-216; and Donald Sassoon, The Strategy of the Italian Communist
Party. From the Resistance to the Historic Compromise, Frances Pinter Publishers Ltd.,
London, 1981, p. 74.
82
passed land reform legislation in 1950. However, this came at the price of a
number of lives and, in the long term, land reform was one of the means
through which the Christian Democrats built its electoral consensus in southern
Italy.18 The Italian police killed three landless peasants in the Calabrian town of
Melissa on 29 October 1949 following the occupation of the Berlingieri estates
near Crotone. Furthermore, another rural worker, Giuseppe Noviello, was shot
by a carabiniere in December 1949 at the town of Montescaglioso in the
province of Matera and later died.19 By the end of 1949 approximately 20,000
landless rural workers had occupied 15,000 hectares of land around Matera and
its environs.20 Faced with the prospect of more violent reprisals against landless
peasants Alcide De Gasperi, the Italian Prime Minister, decided to implement a
limited land reform programme. The aim was to appease Italy’s landless rural
poor and reduce the PCI’s growing influence in the South. As Paul Ginsborg has
argued: ‘to the Communist thrust from below for fundamental change in the
countryside, the DC responded from above with a reorganization and
reformulation of its own making.’21
The Italian government passed an agrarian reform bill for Calabria, the
so-called Legge Sila, on 12 May 1950. The Legge stralcio, which covered
Basilicata, Campania, Sardinia and Puglia in the South as well as the Fucino
18
19
20
21
Sidney Tarrow argues that the PCI’s decision to broaden its electorate in 1948 to include
small landowners, artisans, and middle class professionals as part of the Via italiana al
socialismo strategy softened the party’s stance on land reform. He contends that the PCI’s
decision not to back a peasant revolution inevitably led to the transformation of a potentially
revolutionary group of landless day labourers into conservative small land owners. See
Tarrow, pp. 273-299.
Corrispondence between the Prefect of Matera and the Ministry of the Interior reveals that
Noviello’s death triggered popular protest throughout Italy: see ACS, MI, Gabinetto, Fascicoli
Correnti, 1950-1952, busta 15, fascicolo 12646.
For an outline of post-war land occupations in southern Italy see Ginsborg, pp. 60-63 and pp.
122-127; and Cinanni, pp. 65-68.
Ginsborg, p. 140
83
basin in Abruzzo, the Po delta and parts of Tuscany, was passed on 28 July of
the same year.22 Under the measures of the reform, uncultivated land on estates
over 300 hectares was to be confiscated and redistributed amongst landless
workers.23 As a result over 417,000 hectares of land was expropriated and
distributed to over 120,000 families from 1950 to 1960.24 However, these
measures were reformist rather than revolutionary and characterized by a
number of problems. First, proprietors of great estates were able to avoid the
expropriation of land by dividing their property amongst family members.
Second, the land that the new peasant proprietors received was often of bad
quality making it difficult to establish a working farm. Finally, there were no
peasant representatives on the reform boards which controlled the distribution
of land.25 As a result the Enti di riforma became one of the avenues through
which the DC built political consensus amongst the southern rural poor.
22
23
24
25
The primary focus of the so-called legge stralcio was on southern Italy where 13,000 land
owners possessed 4.5 million hectares of land. In contrast, four million small landowners
and semi-landless workers owned just one million hectares between them. The PugliaMolise-Lucania land reform area, which covered a total of 1.5 million hectares, was the
largest comprensorio, i.e. reform territory, established under the provisions of the legge
stralcio. As the title suggests it included parts of three regions (Puglia, Molise and Basilicata)
and extended over eight different provinces (Foggia, Bari, Brindisi, Taranto and Lecce in
Puglia; Campobasso in Molise; and Potenza and Matera in Basilicata). The reform area
included 129 communes and stretched from the Trigano river in the north to the Adriatic
coast in the east and the southern Appenines near Potenza in the west. However, the
western half of the Province of Potenza was largely excluded from the comprensorio. This
predominately mountainous territory was worked by small-land owning farmers and
deemed unsuitable for land reform. The majority of the 1.5 million hectares of land
expropriated by the Ente di riforma was cash-crop producing agricultural land worked by
day labourers and owned by absentee landlords: the so-called latifondo capitalistico. A total
of 42,727 hectares of land was expropriated in the Province of Matera (12.4 per cent of the
total provincial territory). In contrast, in the Province of Potenza the land reform board
redistributed just 17,081 hectares, or 2.6 per cent of the province. Although land reform
transformed the coastal area of the Metapontino from a malarial plain into a successful
market gardening zone, its results were limited at a regional level. Agricultural reform
directly affected just thirteen per cent of the total area of the Puglia-Lucania-Molise
comprensorio. Moreover, the land was distributed to just ten per cent of agricultural families
residing in the reform zone. For a detailed analysis of land reform in Basilicata see Russell
King, Land Reform: The Italian Experience, Butterworths, London, 1973, pp. 31-123.
Piero Bevilacqua, p. 135
Ginsborg, p. 130
John Foot, Modern Italy, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2003, p. 116
84
Grantees were required to declare their support for the ruling party while in
contrast many of those that had participated in the land occupations were
refused land.26 Conversely, the implementation of agricultural reform alienated
the agrarian elites of southern Italy, many of whom had previously supported
the DC. As Paul Ginsborg notes: ‘The Christian Democrats, therefore, had to
construct a new system of social alliances in the agrarian South, based not so
much upon traditional domination of the land as upon control of the resources
of the state.’27 This was partly achieved through the implementation of the
Cassa del Mezzogiorno – a development programme for southern Italy.
Together with agrarian reform, the Cassa was fundamental in the DC’s
construction and maintenance of political consent in southern Italy through the
distribution of state investment.
De Gasperi presented a draft version of the Cassa del Mezzogiorno to
parliament on 30 March 1950. The bill was passed into legislation on 10 August
1950.28 The law made provision for the investment of 1,000 billion lire over ten
years and was to be financed through funds from the ERP and a loan from the
World Bank. The theories of the Associazione per lo sviluppo dell’industria nel
Mezzogiorno (SVIMEZ) and the Tennessee Valley Authority’s concept of
‘depressed areas’ influenced the Cassa’s initial phase which focused on preindustrialization.29 The aim was to create the structural and economic
conditions needed to implement a programme of industrialization in southern
26
27
28
29
Piero Bevilacqua, p. 135
Ginsborg, p. 139
Piero Bevilacqua, p. 140
For information on SVIMEZ see Petraccone, pp. 221-227. For a detailed discussion of the
philosophy behind the Tennessee Valley Authority see David Ekbladh, ‘Mr TVA: Grass-Roots
Development, David Lilienthal, and the Rise and Fall of the Tennessee Valley Authority as a
Symbol for U.S. Overseas Development’, Diplomatic History, vol. 26 (2002), no. 3, pp. 335374.
85
Italy.30 As a result, the Cassa’s primary focus in its first ten years was on public
works including land reclamation, the building of road infrastructure, irrigation
and sewage systems. There was no investment in industry until 1957. On paper
the Cassa appeared similar to the CGIL’s Labour Plan of 1949 which had put
forward a Keynesian programme for economic development.31 In fact the DC’s
development fund for the South, in conjunction with agrarian reform, formed
the basis of the party’s political and social hegemony in southern Italy until its
liquidation in the early 1990s. This position of power was achieved through
mass clientelism. Investment funds were distributed through a complex
patronage network as part of a political exchange: state jobs, pensions and
welfare contracts were traded for electoral support for the DC. A new political
class of brokers made up of local politicians, lawyers and bureaucrats replaced
the former landed notables as the mediators between the central state and the
local community.32 Resources, power and influence were transmitted from top
to bottom in a hierarchical structure headed by capi correnti, such as Aldo Moro
in Puglia, Giovanni Leone in Campania and Emilio Colombo in Basilicata, who
controlled the distribution and flow of state resources in their region.33 The
result of the Cassa del Mezzogiorno’s transformation into a patronage machine
was twofold. First, the DC succeeded in diffusing the peasant agitations from
30
31
32
33
Allum, ‘The South and National Politics’, p. 104
Foot, Modern Italy, p.116
For an in-depth analysis of these new political elites see Gabriella Gribaudi, Mediatori.
Antropologia del potere democristiano nel Mezzogiorno, Rosenberg and Sellier, Turin, 1980,
pp. 25-29 and pp. 77-80.
For a succinct outline of the networks that distributed state funds in southern Italy see
Ginsborg, pp. 178-181. The process of constructing political clienteles in the South in the
post-war period is examined at a local level in Percy Allum, Politics and Society in Post-war
Naples, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1973; and Judith Chubb, Patronage, Power,
and Poverty in Southern Italy: A Tale of Two Cities, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1982. For a study of political patronage in Basilicata see Leonardo Sacco’s Il cemento del
potere, De Donato, Bari, 1982, which examines the career of the region’s most influential
post-war politician Emilio Colombo.
86
1949-50, and second it embedded the foundations of its long term political
consensus in southern Italy. Conversely, the Communist party found itself in the
difficult position of opposing reforms which, at least on paper, closely
resembled its own proposals for southern Italy. It was in this social and political
context that discourses of Matera as a national shame were produced. The next
section will outline a theoretical framework for examining these patriotic
narratives.
2.2 Studying national shame
The notable media and political focus on post-war Matera was framed within
the context of national shame. These numerous expressions of patriotism in a
country that is generally considered to have a ‘weak’ sense of national identity
provide an ideal test-case for examining patriotic narratives and notions of
national identity in post-war Italy. Over the last decade historians of the
Risorgimento have increasingly focused their attention on the emotions of
national-patriotism.34 Some exemplary work on patriotic narratives in the
Giolittian era has also been carried out.35 The post-war period, by contrast, has
been relatively neglected in this context. This seems to reflect the widely held
historiographical consensus that Italy’s ‘lack’ of patriotism was even more
marked in the era of the first republic. Nationalism as an ideology, it is argued,
had been tainted and discredited by Fascism. Furthermore, military surrender,
the loss of Italy’s overseas colonies, the trauma of foreign occupation and civil
war had combined to create a crisis of national identity and an apparent
34
35
See for example Alberto Mario Banti and Paul Ginsborg (eds.), Storia d’Italia. Annali, 22, Il
Risorgimento, Einaudi, Turin, 2007.
For a pathbreaking work in this regard see Dickie, Una catastrofe patriottica.
87
widespread sense of shame.36 Consequently, it is argued, patriotism ceased to
play a central role in mainstream political discourse until the seismic events of
Tangentopoli in the early 1990s and the emergence of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza
Italia party. Instead, as Silvana Patriaca has argued, ‘the ideologies of the two
main political parties of the [post-war] era, Christian Democracy and the Italian
Communist Party, were ostensibly supra-national and the issue of Italian
character was marginal in their political rhetoric.’37 Christopher Duggan has
claimed that the lure of Moscow for the Italian left on the one hand, and the
attraction of the United States for the DC on the other, was in part a reaction to
Fascism’s focus on nationalism. However, he also contends that this reflected
the Italian state’s failure to create a strong sense of national identity in the postwar period. Instead, Duggan argues, the Christian Democrats were more
interested in retaining political power than forging a new sense of Italian
nationalism.38 Patriotism as an ideology, it is argued, was no longer central to
mainstream Italian politics and was instead primarily associated with far-right
and neo-fascist groups.39 This line of argument, however, arguably reduces
ideas of national identity to an ideological programme. It ignores the fact that
the concept of the nation is a discursive construct which is being constantly
contested and reimagined.40 Writing about Cold War divisions in post-war Italy
John Foot has argued that ‘what was up for grabs was the type of nation itself
36
37
38
39
40
Ben Ghiat, p. 337
Patriarca, Italian Vices, p. 214
Christopher Duggan, ‘Italy in the Cold War Years and the Legacy of Fascism’, in Christopher
Duggan and Christopher Wagstaff (eds.), Italy in the Cold War. Politics, Culture and Society
1948-58, Berg Publishers Limited, 1995, pp. 1-24
Patriarca, Italian Vices, p. 214
See for example Manlio Graziano, The Failure of Italian Nationhood, Palgrave Macmillan,
Basingstoke, 2010. Graziano focuses on Italy’s apparent ‘failure’ to become a nation. His
argument ignores that nations are in fact discursive constructs and instead implies an ideal
concept of national cohesiveness based on a normative understanding of modernity and the
perceived requirements of nationhood.
88
and the national identity of all Italians. Both Communism and Christian
democracy looked to defend or create a particular kind of nation, partly drawn
from international models.’41 The intense media and political focus on the Sassi
in the 1950s and the associated narratives of national shame provide an ideal
laboratory for a micro-analysis of contested notions of Italian patriotism in a
Cold War context. Alberto Banti has argued that historians have tended to
neglect Italian national identity as an object of study.42 Although there have
been a number of important contributions to the history of Italian nationalism
in the last two decades, arguably more work needs to be done in this area. This
chapter, therefore, aims to make a small contribution to that field of study in the
context of post-war Italy. The following section will outline a framework for
examining national shame in the context of post-war Matera. First it will
critique the existing literature which has dealt with this topic. Second it will
provide a working definition of shame drawing on literature from the fields of
psychology and moral philosophy. Third, it will outline a theoretical framework
for examining national shame in the context of post-war Matera using methods
from the history of emotions and the history of nationalism.
Existing literature
Despite the large amount of research on post-war Matera, little work has been
done to examine the concept of national shame in any depth. The small amount
of existing literature that analyses Matera in this context, moreover, fails to
draw on the existing literature on the history of emotions and the history of
41
42
Foot, Modern Italy, pp. 50-51
Alberto Mario Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento: Parentela, santità e onore alle origini
dell’Italia unita, Einaudi, Turin, 2000, pp. ix–xii
89
nationalism. Writing about post-war Matera, Alfonso Pontrandolfi argues that
‘nella coscienza collettiva della comunità materana … la realtà ambientale dei
Sassi ha rappresentato per un verso, e soprattutto per i ceti medi e borghesi, la
vergogna da cancellare.’43 However, his book on the Sassi, Una vergogna
cancellata, provides no further evidence to back up this assertion. The concept
of shame is not analysed at any point. Brief reference is made to a number of
press reports which dubbed Matera a vergogna nazionale in the 1950s, but
these expressions of national sentiment are at no point examined. Instead the
reader is left with the implied notion that national shame is a fixed concept
which requires no further explanation. Finally, the labelling of the Sassi as a
national shame appears to have been axiomatic for Pontrandolfi. The inference
is that people lived in caves in the 1950s and this situation defied the norms of
Italian society. There is no attempt to understand why Matera was dubbed a
national shame at that particular point in time and how the rapidly changing
post-war historical context shaped the numerous patriotic expressions that the
city generated.
Similar oversights can be found in Anne Toxey’s work on post-war
Matera. Ostensibly her research addresses the Sassi as a national shame in more
depth.44 Her analysis, however, overlooks the existing literature on shame, the
history of emotions and nationalism. As a result these concepts are under
theorized. Again the implication is that shame has a universal and fixed
meaning and thus requires no further explanation, rather than being a
normative idea which is conditioned and expressed differently across time and
43
44
Pontrandolfi, p. 11
See Toxey, Materan Contradictions, pp. 52-56 and 82-85 in particular.
90
cultures, as the most recent scholarship on the history of emotions contends.45
Toxey’s work on contemporary attitudes towards the Sassi amongst a selection
of Matera’s residents, however, is noteworthy. She argues that narratives of
shame, heightened in the 1950s through increased political and media
attention, have shaped the predominately negative attitudes towards the Sassi
found amongst former residents and their progeny today. Toxey, however, also
contends that the same residents were made to feel ashamed for their
troglodyte living conditions in the immediate post-war period through media
and political focus on the city. The only evidence offered for this assertion is a
series of contemporary interviews that the author carried out. This is
problematic for a number of reasons. It assumes that attitudes towards the
Sassi in contemporary Matera were the same as those from the 1950s. In
addition it takes for granted that the public and private memories of the people
interviewed have not changed across time and space in the intervening sixty
years. The latter point is particularly surprising as Toxey draws on the vast
body of existing literature in the field of memory studies to examine
contemporary attitudes towards the Sassi. 46
Furthermore, Toxey’s work neglects to theorise notions of the Italian
nation and Italian nationalism. Instead it is inferred that there was a shared and
fixed sense of what these concepts constituted for Italians in the post-war era.
She continually uses the term ‘nation’ to mean the ‘Italian population’ or ‘Italian
people’ and thus neglects to examine the contested nature of patriotic
narratives. Recognizing these points is fundamental to any examination of
45
46
For an outline of the theory of emotional communities see Rosenwein, pp. 821-845.
Toxey, Materan Contradictions, pp. 60-64
91
national shame. The various texts produced on Matera in this context should
provide an insight into how a certain number of journalists and politicians
imagined the Italian nation in the 1950s and why the Sassi were presented as
an affront to this idea. This point has been completely overlooked in the existing
research. Finally, Toxey claims that the Italian media ‘defiled Matera with
shame’ in the post-war period following the publication of Cristo si è fermato a
Eboli and the subsequent interest that the book created in the Sassi.47 However,
her work only makes fleeting references to the key sources that she argues
shaped and disseminated discourses of shame associated with Matera in the
post-war period: newspapers. As a result it is not clear exactly how notions of
Matera as a national shame were created and how the rapidly changing
historical and political contexts of post-war Italy informed these discourses. The
contested nature of different expressions of national shame is overlooked.
Instead the implication is that there was a unified discourse of national shame
rather than a fractured and politically contested concept. In addition, Toxey’s
claim that a narrative created primarily in the Italian press permeated through
the entire Italian ‘nation’ needs to be backed up with a rudimentary
examination of newspaper circulation and readership levels at the very least,
neither of which are supplied.48 This chapter, therefore, aims to be a corrective.
It will draw on the most recent scholarship in the history of emotions and
nationalism to examine the concept of national shame in the context of post-war
47
48
Ibid., p. 84
At various points throughout her book Toxey uses the term ‘nation’ when she appears to
mean ‘the Italian people’. Again the use of such a contentious term in this way suggests that
the large body of existing scholarship on nationalism has been overlooked, in particular
Benedict Anderson’s influential book Imagined Communities.
92
Matera. Furthermore, it will draw on the vast amount of newspaper and
archival material which has been hitherto neglected in the existing scholarship.
Theoretical framework
For psychologists and social theorists, shame is part of a group of emotions that
are social, self-reflexive, self-conscious and have a strong moral element. These
include guilt, humiliation, disgrace, and embarrassment. 49 Guilt, however, lacks
the social component that shame, humiliation, disgrace and embarrassment
require.50 These emotions need the gaze of others, be they real or imagined, in
order to be triggered. Shame involves the perception of having lost face in front
of others and being affected by this occurrence. While guilt focuses primarily on
specific misdeeds, shame in contrast contains a negative sense of the self. 51 The
individual that feels shame experiences painful feelings of inadequacy. Shame
occurs at a moment of social consciousness, when an individual perceives the
gaze of others. Hence, as Michael L. Morgan argues, rather than the actual
opinion of others, shame can be the result of an individual’s estimate of
themselves, a projection of how others might see them and how they see
themselves.52 It is implicit, therefore, that shame requires an individual to have
notions of how they should act, the type of person they ought to be, and that
others expect them to be. Their actions can then be judged to have gone against
49
50
51
52
See Michael L. Morgan, On Shame, Routledge, London, 2008; Michael Lewis, ‘Self-conscious
emotions. Embarrassment, Pride, Shame, and Guilt’, in Michael Lewis, Jeanette M. HavilandJones and Lisa Feldman Barrett (eds.), Handbook of Emotions, The Guilford Press, London,
2008, pp. 742-756; and Karen Caplovitz Barrett, ‘A Functionalist Approach to Shame and
Guilt’, in June Price Tangey and Kurt W. Fischer (eds.), Self-Conscious Emotions. The
Psychology of Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, and Pride, The Guildford Press, New York, 1995,
pp. 25-63.
See Martha C. Nussbam, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, Princeton
University Press, New Jersey, 2004, pp. 207-209.
See Barrett, pp. 25-63.
Morgan, p. 15
93
these perceived values or not, and in the former case may trigger feelings of
shame.53 Psychologists and moral philosophers further subdivide shame into
two categories: acknowledged and unacknowledged. The latter, it is claimed,
can have severe negative effects at an individual level, while at a collective level
it can be used as a tool of social and political control.54 Shame, however, can also
have positive effects according to Michael L. Morgan. It can act as an instrument
which shames people into action. As a result, Morgan contends, shame can be
used as an important tool of political motivation.55
Expressions of national shame occur when the ‘nation’ is judged to have
violated its putative values and ideals.56 Shame in these instances involves the
desire to be seen to fulfil a national ideal. The desire for national pride,
therefore, is crucial to expressions of national shame. National shame instead
exposes the nation’s apparent failure to live up to its perceived values. In order
to be triggered, someone needs to catch the nation out, to witness its failed
attempt to uphold specific values. As with personal shame, this witness can be
real or imagined. The implication is that the eyes of the ‘civilized world’ are on
‘us’, i.e. national citizens. Expressions of patriotic shame are one of the ways
through which ideas of the nation are created. Sara Ahmed’s work is exemplary
in developing this hypothesis. She argues that expressions of national shame
‘make’ the nation. Ahmed contends that ‘naming emotions often involves
differentiating between the subject and the object of feeling.’57 For example,
claiming that an action or an object is ‘a stain upon the nation’ implies that the
53
54
55
56
57
Lewis, p. 742
Patriarca, ‘A Patriotic Emotion’, pp. 135-136
This is Morgan’s central thesis, however, arguably some of the author’s conclusions display a
normative model of what Western moral values should constitute.
The concept of the ‘nation’ is defined in detail below. See pp. 107-111.
Ahmed, p. 13
94
nation can be wronged. It therefore becomes a subject which can seemingly feel
emotion. At the same time expressions of patriotic shame generate the nation as
the object of ‘our’ feelings. ‘We’ apparently experience shame on behalf of the
nation. Furthermore, Ahmed notes ‘the feeling does not simply exist before the
utterance, but becomes “real” as an effect, shaping different kinds of actions and
orientations.’58 Claiming that something is a ‘stain upon the nation’, therefore,
generates the nation as if it were an entity which can feel emotion.59
Ahmed contends that national shame acts as a narrative of reproduction
for heteronormative values, i.e. norms based on the belief that heterosexuality
is both the normal and preferred sexual orientation. She argues that there are at
least two specific ways in which expressions of shame contribute to the
construction of the nation in this context. The first instance involves shame
produced by what she terms ‘illegitimate others’ such as homosexuals or
immigrants who are judged to have failed to live up to and reproduce notions of
the national ideal. The second case, in contrast, is when the nation shames itself
in its treatment of others. It may be exposed as failing to live up to the values
that it purports to hold dear.60 The latter example is relevant in the context of
post-war Matera. Shame was expressed for the Italian state’s failure to rehouse
the estimated 15,000 people living in cave homes in the early 1950s. This
reflected fears over the link between morality and housing conditions as will be
examined in detail below.
58
59
60
Ibid., p. 13
Ibid., p. 13
Ibid., p. 108
95
Moreover, Ahmed identifies an apparent lack of remorse as a potential
source of national shame. She uses the example of the Australian government’s
refusal to acknowledge that the country’s indigenous population had been
mistreated and the subsequent popular reaction. Witnessing the government’s
lack of shame can be in itself shaming: ‘the shame of the absence of shame’ as
Ahmed terms it.61 The demand is for the nation to appear ashamed. The charge
is of being shamed by the shameless. Shame expressed over a lack of shame in
others is linked to notions of national pride. The implication of this narrative is
that if shameful actions in the past are acknowledged then pride can be
restored.62
Furthermore, Ahmed argues that expressions of national shame can
foster a sense of national identity. Recognising the nation’s failure to live up to
its perceived ideals is a means through which individuals identify with the
nation. A citizen may be ashamed for their country’s failure to meet the
standard of its perceived national ideals. The shame expressed underlines the
individual’s apparent love for their nation. If notions of the nation are
considered to be normative rather than descriptive, as ‘ought to’ concepts, then
expressions of shame can be seen as an important means through which nations
are imagined. Shame, nonetheless, can produce a sense of belonging through an
identity’s failure to live up to an apparent model of national values. 63 Identifying
and acknowledging wrongdoing can help to restore national pride which is
threatened when shameful acts are perceived and then acknowledged. The ‘we’
who identify and express national shame identify themselves as part of a
61
62
63
Ibid., p. 111
Ibid., p. 111
Ibid., p. 108
96
national community with shared values. If ‘you’ are ashamed of certain past
action or inaction ‘you’ are a true patriot. Expressions of national shame for past
wrongs, therefore, show that ‘we’ are now well-meaning citizens who recognise
right from wrong. According to Ahmed acknowledging these failures and their
temporary nature allows for a narrative of recovery to begin. The nation,
therefore, can return towards embodying the putative values that define its
identity in the present.64 The appropriation of the national ‘we’, however, is
arguably an important means through which political groups can look to define
themselves as ‘good’ patriots and denounce their opponents as ‘bad’
nationalists. These ideologically charged ideas of national identity, therefore,
can play an important role in the shaping of political identities.
In her work on shame and the Risorgimento, Silvana Patriarca argues
that, given its social and political nature, the study of national shame should be
of particular interest to historians. However, she adds that they need to be wary
of the ahistorical theories of moral philosophers and psychologists. Instead
historians should draw on the burgeoning field of the history of emotions when
examining shame – or any other emotion.65 But how should historians study
emotional expressions in the past? The primary question raised is whether
emotions are innate or cultural.66 There is much disagreement over this point,
but Susan J. Matt has noted the essential idea which grounds the growing, yet
theoretically problematic, field of the history of emotions:
64
65
66
Ibid., pp. 108-110
Patriarca, ‘A Patriotic Emotion’, pp. 135-136
For an in-depth discussion of this point see William M. Reddy, ‘Against Constructionsim. The
Historical Ethnography of Emotions’, Current Anthropology, vol. 38 (1997), no. 3, pp. 327351.
97
Historians of the emotions share the conviction that feelings are never
strictly biological or chemical occurrences; neither are they wholly
created by language and society. Instead feelings are something in
between. They have a neurological basis but are shaped, repressed,
expressed differently from place to place and era to era. 67
The exact object of study when examining emotions in a historical context,
however, remains a contentious issue. This thesis argues that it is impossible to
tell exactly what people felt in the past. But that does not mean emotional
expressions cannot be the object of historical analysis. Emotional activity
involves imagining the expectations and reactions of others. This process
involves the creation of emotional scenarios which may be genuinely felt but
can also be manipulated for a specific purpose. One means for examining these
emotional scripts is to try and understand the cultural frameworks which
shaped them and the implied moral world and audience for which they were
created.
Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of ‘emotional communities’ provides a
theoretical framework for analysing narratives of national shame in this
context. Rosenwein defines the concept thus:
People lived – and live – in what I propose to call ‘emotional
communities.’ These are precisely the same social communities –
families, neighborhoods [sic], parliaments, guilds, monasteries, parish
church memberships – but the researcher looking at them seeks above
all to uncover systems of feeling: what these communities (and the
individuals within them) define and assess as valuable or harmful to
them; the evaluations that they make about others’ emotions; the nature
of the affective bonds between people that they recognize; and the
modes of emotional expression that they expect, encourage, tolerate, and
deplore.68
67
68
Susan J. Matt, ‘Current Emotion Research in History: Or Doing History from the Inside Out’,
Emotion Review, vol. 117 (2011), no. 3, p. 118
Rosenwein, p. 842
98
Furthermore, Rosenwein argues that people are not fixed in one emotional
community, rather they move between different groups depending on the social
context. Their emotional expression and judgements are tailored to these
diverse circumstances. Thus it can be argued that ‘not only does each society
call forth, shape, constrain, and express emotions differently, but even within
the same society contradictory values and models, not to mention deviant
individuals find their place.’69 In order to identify and study emotional
communities, historians need to examine the primary documents of the social
groups of interest in an attempt to ascertain the language used to express
emotion. The context in which emotions were expressed is fundamental to
examining an emotional community. As Rosenwein argues: ‘[Emotional
expressions] depend on the values and situations that elicit them, on the
narratives that people use to make sense of themselves and their world, and on
the accepted or idiosyncratic modes of expression that are employed to
communicate them.’70 The historical context, in which emotional scripts were
created, therefore, needs to be established in order to better understand how
and why people expressed their emotions in a particular way at a specific
moment in time.
Clearly it is impossible to study the emotional expressions of an entire
‘nation’, society, social group, or even emotional community. Historians can only
rely on the sources available and examine representative examples. This point,
however, should not diminish the importance of studying emotion scenarios
historically. Rosenwein notes that ‘we cannot know how all people felt, but we
69
70
Ibid. p. 843
Jan Plamper, ‘The History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barbara
Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns’, History and Theory, (2010), no. 49, p. 259
99
can begin to know how some members of ascendant elites thought they and
others felt, or at least thought they should feel.’71 In the context of Matera and
discourses of national shame this group is almost exclusively limited to a
number of journalists and politicians. Broad generalizations about the feelings
of all Italians need to be avoided.72 Instead examining the patriotic narratives
that a number of politicians and journalists conveyed in the context of post-war
Matera - as well as how they thought others should express national shame can provide an insight into their ideas of Italian national identity and the norms
of the emotional community they aimed to address. It is difficult to gauge the
reception and impact that these expressions of national shame had at political,
intellectual and popular levels. However the journalists and politicians that
generated patriotic narratives in the context of post-war Matera had access to
regional and national audiences and their public voices were potentially farreaching.
Any study of national shame needs to engage with the large body of
existing scholarship on nationalism. As noted above, a lacuna exists in the
research carried out on post-war Matera in this regard. This chapter will
attempt to fill that gap drawing on existing studies of the nation. John Dickie’s
work on Italian nationalism is exemplary and provides a theoretical framework
for examining nationalist discourse. Dickie defines the nation as ‘a social fiction,
indeed a plurality of competing social fictions that are generated within modern
societies as an integral moment of the struggle for power and consensus.’ 73
Viewing the nation as a discursive construct, Dickie argues, enables historians
71
72
73
Ibid., p. 258
See for example Toxey, Materan Contradictions, p. 85.
Dickie, ‘Timing, Memory and Disaster’, p. 152
100
to investigate the ideas with which people imagine national identity at specific
moments in time, their relationship with the historical context in which they
were produced, and their subsequent impact on historical processes. 74
However, he contends that national identity needs to be studied on a microrather than a macro-historical level to avoid broad generalizations.75 Post-war
Matera, therefore, provides an ideal laboratory for examining competing
nationalist narratives at a local level in the rapidly changing political context of
post-war Italy.
Dickie’s work on nationalism builds upon Benedict Anderson’s highlyinfluential thesis in Imagined Communities. Anderson famously defined the
nation as ‘an imagined political community … imagined as both inherently
limited and sovereign.’76 Nations, according to Anderson, are groups of people
who will never get to know each other personally, but imagine themselves as a
cohesive community moving forward through time simultaneously. Dickie,
however, argues that Anderson’s work overlooks the numerous ways in which
the nation can be imagined. Rather than the notion of a single harmonious
imagined community that Anderson envisages, there are, in fact, a myriad of
competing and contradictory narratives of what constitutes national identity. As
Dickie contends: ‘Benedict Anderson’s famous slogan is right but does not go far
enough: nations are ‘imagined communities’, but the process of imagining them
74
75
76
See Dickie, ‘Imagined Italies’, pp. 19-33; and Dickie, ‘La macchina da scrivere’, pp. 261-285.
Dickie, ‘Timing, Memory and Disaster’, pp. 163-164
See Anderson, pp. 6-7. Although there have been numerous criticisms of Anderson’s account
of the origins and spread of nationalism – in particular from post-colonial and feminist
perspectives – his concept of the nation provides a point of departure for any analysis of
patriotic discourse. For critiques of the socio-political aspects of Anderson’s work see Philip
Spencer and Howard Wollman, Nationalism. A Critical Introduction, Sage Publications Ltd,
London, 2002, pp. 37-40; and Euan Hague, ‘Benedict Anderson’, in Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin
and Gill Valentine (eds.), Key Thinkers on Space and Place, Sage Publications Ltd, London,
2004, pp. 16-22.
101
is a far more diverse and conflictual process than Anderson himself assumes.’ 77
This contention is applicable to post-war expressions of Matera as a national
shame. They reveal a loosely shared narrative that the Sassi constituted a
national shame but conflicting ideas of the imagined Italian nation against
which Matera’s cave dwellings were compared, and to whom blame needed to
be attributed.
Furthermore, Dickie notes a number of assumptions about nationalism
that historians tackling this field need to keep in mind which have been
overlooked in the existing literature on post-war Matera. First, it is implicit in
theorizations of the nation that everyone knows and agrees on what exactly
constitutes the nation. Second, it is assumed that the nation is a tangible entity,
a thing, be it a specific culture or ‘race’. One of the primary ways in which
patriotic narratives are established and maintained is through delineating the
nation’s borders and the Others found beyond the pale. ‘We’ can be set against
foreigners and internal enemies in the process of constructing the nation’s
timeless characteristics. As Dickie notes: ‘the nation defines itself against
impurities and weaknesses, traces of the foreign, which can be projected onto
phenomena both inside and outside of the real boundaries of the state.’ 78
Images of the South have provided an internal Other against which notions of
the Italian nation have been imagined from unification onwards. The bulk of
research carried out on stereotypical images of the Mezzogiorno and patriotic
discourse focuses on the Liberal period. The post-war period has been relatively
neglected in contrast. Matera provides an opportunity to examine the interface
77
78
Dickie, ‘Timing, Memory and Disaster’, p. 152
Dickie, Darkest Italy, p. 19
102
between patriotic narratives and notions of the South after 1945. The Sassi
became an important symbol of southern Italian otherness in the immediate
post-war period. The city’s cave dwellings came to symbolize different concepts
for different groups including an affront to the ideals of the Italian nation, Italy’s
post-war housing crisis, the failure of the Italian state to modernize the
Mezzogiorno, a remnant of a bygone age, and above all a national shame.
Drawing together the different theoretical threads outlined above, this
chapter contends that the ‘nation’ is a myriad of competing and conflicting
imagined communities. Expressions of national shame, furthermore, illustrate
this point. They involve imagining a set of ideals to which the nation has failed
to live up. The patriotic ‘we’ implied in expressions of national shame is an
imagined community. It follows, therefore, that expressions of national shame
involve competing narratives. The articles and official documents examined
below in the context of post-war Matera reveal that many different and
conflicting patriotic voices were generated. Similar to patriotic narratives,
emotional scripts also need to be thought of in the plural. Expressions of shame
change across time and space. This chapter argues that people live and lived in
emotional communities which shape the accepted norms of emotional
expression in a given social, cultural and historical context. The different
emotional communities that influenced references to the Sassi as a national
shame will be identified, contextualized and examined in detail in an attempt to
understand their motivations and workings.
103
2.3 An anatomy of national shame
The first time that the term ‘national shame’ was mentioned in the context of
Matera appears to have been in Vincenzo Corazza’s 1941 report on the Sassi.
This account of housing conditions in Matera’s cave dwellings quotes Arcangelo
Ilvento, the vice-director of the department of public health under Fascism, who
had dubbed the Sassi a ‘vergogna nazionale’.79 This source, however, was not
widely disseminated and does not appear to be the foundation for post-war
patriotic narratives. Instead post-war references to Matera as a national shame
in public debate seem to have first emerged in 1948. During a pre-election
speech given in the city on 1 April 1948, Palmiro Togliatti branded the living
conditions that he witnessed at Matera a disgrace. 80 Similar sentiments were
expressed in a number of newspapers and official documents from 1948
onwards. The exact term vergogna nazionale does not appear to have been used
in the Italian press until 1951. Notions of Matera as a national shame, however,
intensified following the Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi’s visit to the
city in June 1950 and the subsequent announcement that the Italian
government would implement special legislation for the Sassi. The narratives of
79
80
ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 82, fascicolo 661,
sottofascicolo A
Palmiro Togliatti gave a pre-election speech at Matera on 1 April 1948. The head of the
Communist party was the first political leader to visit the provincial capital in the post-war
period. The Sassi, Togliatti argued, provided evidence that the Italian ruling class and
successive governments had continually neglected the South. Matera’s cave homes, however,
did not merely constitute a housing problem according to the PCI leader. They were also a
national shame: ‘Non è possibile lasciare che il Paese sia governato da quei gruppi sociali, da
quei partiti, da quegli uomini i quali in decenni e secoli, dacchè governano l’Italia, non sono
stati capaci di far scomparire queste vergogne [the Sassi], queste miserie dei lavoratori, non
sono stati capaci di dare a queste regioni la civilità di cui esse hanno bisogno che è un diritto
per tutti gli uomini.’ Using the Sassi as a symbol of the entire South, Togliatti implied that
southern Italy was backward compared to other parts of Italy. The Italian Communist Party’s
post-war ideas of capitalist versus Bolshevik progress, as outlined below, arguably informed
the notions of affluence and backwardness that Togliatti looked to communicate. For the
above quotation see I comunisti e i Sassi di Matera, Festa dell’Unità, Matera, 1977, pp. 11-13.
104
national shame generated in the context of post-war Matera reached their apex
in the period 1950-1952. This period was marked by increased political and
media calls for state intervention to resolve the city’s housing problems. On 6
March 1951 Michele Bianco, the PCI deputy for Potenza, presented a draft
special law for Matera before parliament. The DC government quickly
countered with its own provisional bill later the same year and a parliamentary
committee was established to discuss the proposed special legislation for
Matera. The first special law for the Sassi was passed on 17 May 1952. Political
and media references to Matera as a national shame largely disappeared in an
Italian context following the implementation of this legislation. The DC claimed
to have finally tackled Matera’s housing problems and once again the PCI saw
its main political rival usurp another post-war initiative that the Communist
Party had originally proposed.
Examining expressions of national shame in the context of the Sassi
should shed light on the moral worlds and motivations of those individuals who
called for government intervention at Matera. Descriptions of the Sassi as a
national shame provide an opportunity to carry out a micro-study into notions
of the Italian nation amongst a number of post-war politicians and journalists.
The focus of this section, therefore, is to examine the different expressions of
national shame generated during the scope of this study. Moreover, it will aim
to identify and contextualize the emotional communities which shaped these
patriotic narratives. A number of questions will be addressed: what do
expressions of national shame tell us about notions of Italian national identity in
the immediate post-war period? Furthermore, why was Matera seen as a
national shame at that point in time; and what impact did discourses of national
105
shame have on the decision to implement a state intervention programme at
Matera?
The foreigner’s gaze
The critical gaze of foreign nationals is a recurring narrative found in post-war
accounts of Matera.81 As noted above, shame requires the gaze of an ‘other’, be
they real or imagined, in order to be triggered. It involves losing face in front of
someone else. Shame, therefore, can be the based on an individual’s projection
of an external judgement and ultimately reveal their own self-perceptions.
National shame also requires the presence of a witness who observes the
nation’s apparent failure to live up to a set of putative ideals. This can be caused
through envisaging the opinion of what Sara Ahmed has dubbed ‘international
civil society’ as much as a reaction to concrete external criticism.82 Examining a
selection of patriotic narratives produced in the context of post-war Matera and
notions of the foreigner’s gaze will allow for these competing expressions of the
nation to be studied in detail.
A recurring narrative found in Italian sources on post-war Matera is that
the Sassi became world famous due to frequent visits from foreign journalists
and intellectuals who later wrote about the city’s cave homes in the
international press. These descriptions, it was claimed, displayed a morbid
fascination with the Sassi and their picturesque quality while concurrently
denouncing the living conditions as a stain upon Italy’s already damaged
international reputation. In a letter addressed to both the Italian Prime Minister
81
82
Silvana Patriarca’s work on national shame and the Risorgimento was the main source of
inspiration for this section. See Patriarca, ‘A Patriotic Emotion’, pp. 134-151.
Ahmed, p. 111
106
and the Minister for the Interior, the Prefect of Matera, B.D. Iodice, conveyed the
perceived level of national and international interest in the Sassi in the early
1950s:
La stampa di ogni corrente, politica e non politica, la cinematografica, la
letteratura stessa, dall’argomento dei Sassi Materani ha tratto e trae
continui spunti, non sempre felici né utili al paese, che vengono svolti per
agitare il problema dal punto di vista sociale, economico, politico e
storico, ed ormai è stata richiamata tutta l’attenzione non solo della
Provincia o della Regione, ma anche della Nazione e del mondo, sul
problema annoso, numerosi sono pure i turisti e forestieri, che
s’interessano ormai allo storico problema della città materana, che ne ha
il triste privilegio.83
Iodice’s letter conveyed the belief that the eyes of the world were on Matera in
the immediate post-war period and that the Sassi were a focal point for national
and international journalists and writers interested in Italy’s southern question.
The letter also implies that the media attention on Matera had been detrimental
to Italy’s international reputation.
Similar sentiments were expressed in a number of Italian press articles
in the late 1940s and early 1950s.84 Writing in 1949 for Il Giornale d’Italia about
the apparent widespread interest in Matera, for example, Marco Aontenelli
claimed that ‘con quel che si è scritto intorno a questo miserabile alveare
umano [the Sassi] … si potrebbe formare una biblioteca.’85 There was, to be
sure, unprecedented international press interest in the Sassi during the late
83
84
85
ACS, PCM 48-50, Risanamento Rioni Sassi, I.6.I, no. 77794
See for example: ‘Intervista del nostro direttore col Ministro Zellerbach’, Il Giornale del
Mezzogiorno , 3 October 1949 and Gino Spera, ‘Dalla regione più povera d’Italia. Problemi di
Matera ancora da risolversi’, Il Tempo, 16 April 1950, p. 6.
Marco Aontenelli, ‘Drammatiche cifre del Mezzogiorno. Duemila case per alloggiare gli
inquilini delle caverne’, Il Giornale d’Italia, 27 October 1949, p. 2. Il Giornale d’Italia was a
national daily newspaper founded in 1901 by the liberal monarchists Sidney Sonnino and
Antonio Salandro. In the post-war period the paper was edited by Giovanni Santi Savarino
and although not directly linked to the DC, it supported the party’s moderate policies. See
Paolo Murialdi, La stampa italiana della liberazione alla crisi di fine secolo, Laterza, Bari,
1995, pp. 54-55.
107
1940s and 1950s. Foreign curiosity about Matera appears to have been the
direct result of Cristo si è fermato a Eboli’s success in English translation.
Archival research for this thesis uncovered numerous examples of Anglophone
newspaper articles on Matera and the Sassi from 1949 onwards. The majority of
these press reports were produced in the context of promoting Marshall Plan
funding in Italy, De Gasperi’s visits to Matera in 1950 and 1953 respectively,
and the special law for the Sassi passed on 17 May 1952. Similar to Italian press
sources, Matera was presented in the English-language media as a symbol of
Italy’s southern question. The tone of these articles, however, was generally
positive and hopeful. The narrative presented was that the Sassi were an ageold problem which the Italian state, thanks to American investment, had finally
taken measures to resolve.86 International press coverage, together with an
English-language documentary film on the Sassi that the Marshall Plan’s
propaganda office produced in 1951, appear to have further increased Matera’s
international notoriety.87 Writing in the New York Times in 1954 Herbert L.
Matthews contended that ‘Matera has world-wide fame because of its cave
houses.’88 While it is impossible to ascertain the veracity of Matthews’s
statement, it suggests that the Sassi were at least well-known in international
media circles.
86
87
88
See Patrick McGauley, ‘Da Siberia fascista a stella della riforma agraria: l’immagine della
Basilicata sulla stampa anglofona 1945-1970’, in Basilikos. Rivista di storia locale, Istituto di
studi storici della Basilicata meridionale, Città del Sole, Naples, 2011, pp. 73-88.
Romolo Marcellini, Life and Death of a Cave City (Italy, 1951). For further production
information see http://www.sellingdemocracy.org/filmlist.html (accessed 22/07/2013) and
Bonifazio, Narrating Modernization.
See Herbert L. Matthews, ‘Cave-Homes Pose Problem in Italy: Government Trying to House
Thousands Living in Misery in Poverty-Ridden South’, The New York Times, 20 May 1954, p.
6. Similar sentiments were expressed in The Times of London in 1957. See From Our Special
Correspondent, ‘Matera’s Cave Dwellers. Poverty and Ignorance in the Italian South’, The
Times, 2 December 1957, p. 11.
108
Italian claims that the international media branded Matera a national
shame, however, do not reflect Anglophone press coverage of the Sassi in the
early 1950s. A large number of English-language articles which cover post-war
Matera were located for this research project. These texts describe the Sassi’s
living conditions as backward and inadequate to varying degrees, e.g. an article
in The Times of London from 1953 refers to the Sassi as ‘a colony which has for
long been a blot on the life of the country.’89 The only clear-cut reference in the
English-speaking press to Matera as a national shame, however, was found in an
article dating from 1955.90 The piece was written to highlight the fact that
numerous families were still living in cave homes a number of years after the
DC government had implemented special legislation for Matera. In contrast,
Italian claims that the foreign press had branded the Sassi a national shame
date from the early 1950s. The Italian response, therefore, appears to have been
based on internal perceptions and projections of the foreigner’s gaze rather
than on actual claims that the Sassi constituted a national shame made in the
foreign press.91
89
90
91
From our own correspondent, ‘New villages for cave dwellers. Signor De Gasperi in South
Italy, The Times, 18 May 1953, p. 6
Writing in The Guardian in 1955, Wayland Youngs argued that ‘The place [Matera] is
beautiful and the people are friendly and strong and witty for all their savage history. But the
place is also a disgrace to a civilized nation. Matera makes nonsense of communism and
democracy, of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Organisation for European
Economic Cooperation.’ See Wayland Young, ‘The Caves of Matera. Still Dwellings To-day’,
The Manchester Guardian, 7 January 1955, p. 4.
Although Matera was briefly the focus of international media attention in the 1950s, the
existing secondary sources appear to have overestimated the extent to which photographic
images of the Sassi were published in the English-speaking press. Marida Talamona notes
that the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson visited Matera in the early 1950s to
photograph the Sassi. She claims that these photos were later published in LIFE magazine. A
selection of these images was published in the report that the UNRRA-CASAS special
commission for the Sassi produced in 1956. See Riccardo Musatti, Federico G. Friedmann
and Giuseppe Isnardi, Commissione per lo studio della città e dell’agro di Matera: Saggi
introduttivi, vol. I, UNRRA CASAS, Prima Giunta, Rome, 1956. However, no trace of these
photos has been found in the archive of LIFE magazine which is now available online.
Similarly Paolo Scrivano has claimed that images of the Sassi were published worldwide
109
The idea that the foreign press dubbed the Sassi a national shame,
however, has been repeated in the secondary literature on post-war Matera. For
example Anne Toxey has recently argued that following Cristo si è fermato a
Eboli’s success in the English-speaking world Matera ‘came to be labeled [sic]
“vergogna nazionale” … which the anglophone [sic] press reproduced as “the
shame of Italy.”’92 No specific examples or further references are provided to
back up this assertion. The salient point about international press coverage of
the Sassi, judging from the sources located, is that it intensified following the
implementation of the special law for the Sassi on 17 May 1952. Emphasis was
placed on the role that foreign aid had played in tackling Matera’s housing
crisis. Nonetheless, the perceived foreigner’s gaze is implicit in all of the postwar articles published in the Italian press which refer to Matera’s cave homes as
a national shame. The increased international interest in the Sassi appears to
have enabled a number of journalists and politicians to create powerful and
convincing emotional scenarios and use the concept of national shame for
political ends. Examining a number of representative examples in which the
implied gaze of the foreigner is addressed explicitly will help to reveal the
workings of and motivations behind these patriotic narratives.
The Communist weekly magazine Vie Nuove published a two-page
spread on the Sassi in 1948 complete with a series of five photos depicting the
92
thus increasing the city’s international fame. He references a series of fifty-eight photos of
the Sassi taken by the American photographer Marjory Collins in 1950, some of which were
later published in Adriano Olivetti’s periodical Comunità but do not appear to have been
published elsewhere. No further references are offered to back up Scrivano’s assertion. See
Marida Talamona, ‘Dieci anni di politica dell’UNRRA Casas: dalle case ai senzatetto ai borghi
rurali nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia (1945-1955), il ruolo di Adriano Olivetti’, in Carlo Olmo (ed.),
Costruire la città dell’uomo, Einaudi, Turin, 2001, pp. 173-204; and Paolo Scrivano, ‘Signs of
Americanization in Italian Domestic Life: Italy’s Postwar Conversion to Consumerism’,
Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 40 (2005), no. 2, pp. 317-340.
Toxey, ‘Reinventing the Cave’, p. 66. See also Toxey, Materan Contradictions, p. 52.
110
homes and lives of Matera’s rural poor. In this piece, the poet and writer Alfonso
Gatto commented on the perceived behaviour of Italian and overseas visitors to
Matera. Gatto was highly critical of what he viewed as the voyeuristic gaze of
outsiders who, the article claimed, romanticized the lives of the Sassi’s
estimated 15,000 inhabitants: ‘s’accumulano stupore e meraviglia sui Sassi di
Matera come se fossero incastonati nella corona di un re barbaro e magnifico
che caca seduto sul trono ed è ricco della sua splendida sporcizia.’93 Gatto
argued that visitors to Matera had little understanding of the hardship that the
city’s agricultural workers endured. Instead they had an idealised view of the
Sassi and their focus on Matera’s rustic beauty merely prolonged a solution to
the city’s acute housing problems. Gatto claimed that ‘i viaggiatori e i curiosi
guardono meravigliati i monumenti di questa miseria e dicono “bello”. Matera
resta per loro una città pittoresca e “folkloristica” da scoprire e da far conoscere
perché rimanga gravata dalla nostra pietà.’ 94 Matera’s problems were further
exacerbated, Gatto claimed, by the attitude of local officials who were reluctant
to support a rehousing programme as they feared the city would lose its scenic
quality.95
Blame for the living conditions at Matera was attributed to the Christian
Democrat government in particular and Italian society in general: ‘chi permette
queste tane e queste grotte si chiamino case d’uomini – governo o società che
sia – è colpevole e offre agli sguardi caritatevoli e avidi dei curiosi lo stesso
93
94
95
Alfonso Gatto, ‘Monumenti della miseria’, Vie Nuove , 19 December 1948, page number not
available
Ibid.
Ibid.
111
spettacolo che si vuol proibire.’96 Gatto’s article implies, therefore, that Italian
society and the Italian government were shameless. They had failed to
acknowledge the gravity of Matera’s housing problems. Instead Italy welcomed
patronizing outsiders to marvel at the Sassi’s apparent rustic charm. Matera’s
problems would not be resolved, Gatto argued, ‘finchè non avremo vergogna di
noi stessi.’97 The author, therefore, created an emotional scenario in which he
accused Italians, and the Italian government, of lacking shame. The apparent
morbid fascination of foreign visitors was used to add further weight to this
politically charged narrative. The implication of Gatto’s article is that ‘we’, the
good patriots, are ashamed of Matera, while the DC government, in contrast, is
shameless and therefore unpatriotic and that foreigners are just hopeless
romanticizers. The article, thus, illustrates how notions of Matera as a national
shame were a means through which political identities and ideas of the nation
were forged and contested in a Cold War context.
Gatto’s reaction to foreign depictions of Matera needs to be understood
in the context of Communist Party notions of affluence and progress that were
prevalent in post-war Italy. The PCI believed that industrial development and
prosperity were both positive and necessary as long as they were the products
of communism and not the capitalist system. This viewpoint was partly a
reaction to the widespread belief in Italy that the fruits of the ‘American Dream’
could be enjoyed in post-war Europe. Consumer goods, running water, and
individual homes quickly became concrete aspirations for many Italians. In this
context the communist press in Italy depicted the USSR as a terrestrial paradise
96
97
Ibid.
Ibid.
112
where the consumer goods limited to the wealthy in capitalist society were
available to all citizens.98
Capitalist affluence, in contrast, was viewed as inauthentic because it did
not improve working people’s lives. Poverty and inequality were seen as
evidence of capitalism’s dysfunction. Anything judged to be nostalgic, oldfashioned or picturesque was rejected as decadent, reactionary and a potential
barrier to communist progress.99 This viewpoint was exemplified in the
rejection of intellectual interest in Italian folk culture - for example in PCI
critiques of the work of Carlo Levi and Ernesto de Martino.100 As regards postwar Matera, the accusation that outsiders were more interested in the Sassi’s
picturesque qualities than the city’s rural poor is a recurring narrative found in
PCI treatment of the city and its cave homes. 101 Furthermore the Communist
Party called for the destruction of the Sassi to make way for new popular
housing.102 The PCI’s notion of affluence and rejection of anything seen as
nostalgic helps to contextualize these viewpoints as well as the emotional
scenario that Gatto presented to the reader in his article.
Furthermore, in the context of PCI notions of progress, the Sassi were
viewed as a prime example of the failure of capitalism. This point is exemplified
98
99
100
101
102
See Sandro Bellassai, La morale comunista. Pubblico e privato nella rappresentazione del PCI
(1947-1956), Carocci Editore, Rome, 2000, pp. 166-173. For a broad overview of Italian
depictions of Russia in the Cold War see Donald Sassoon, ‘Italian Images of Russia, 19451956’, in Duggan and Wagstaff, pp. 189-202.
Bellassai, p. 168
See Chapter 1, pp. 72-73.
See for example Nicola Nicoletti, ‘Una significativa voce dalle grotte dell’inferno. I cittadini
del Sasso hanno chiesto ad Einaudi di far impiegare in opere di pace i miliardi per il riarmo’,
L’Unità, 3 January 1951, p. 2. Nicoletti claimed that ‘i forestieri vengono a visitare il nostro
Sasso, quelli democratici per rendersi conto della nostra miseria e per darci consigli sul
modo come organizzarci per risolvere i nostri problemi, e quelli reazionari per godersi il così
detto “panorama” e per esclamare poi “in fondo non si sta proprio tanto male ad abitare qui”.
See for example Michele Bianco’s intervention in Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, 26
September 1951, p. 30585.
113
in an article published in the communist daily L’Unità on 3 January 1951. The
author Nicola Nicoletti described the Sassi as ‘uno sconcio ed un disonore per
l’Italia.’103 He also accused Alcide De Gasperi of being the latest in a long line of
Italian public servants that had governed Italy in the interests of capitalism. The
Sassi, Nicoletti claimed, were a monument to the degeneracy of capitalist
society: ‘Quando avremo risolto questo problema il Sasso non si chiamerà più
Inferno, ma gli metteremo il nome, e lo faremo diventare “Museo delle
Meraviglie della società capitalista”.’ 104 Gatto and Nicoletti’s expressions of
national shame in the context of the Sassi were linked to the perceived dangers
of capitalist society and a rejection of the decadent. The implication in both
articles, therefore, was that to be a good Italian patriot was to be a communist.
A very different account of foreign interest in the Sassi can be found in
Delio Mariotti’s article ‘La città delle grotte’. It was published in La Stampa on
25 July 1950 to document Alcide De Gasperi’s first visit to the city two days
previously. The report opened with the description of an impromptu and
unauthorised expedition that a number of British Labour politicians had made
to Matera during an official stay in Rome. ‘Una curiosità morbosa’, Mariotti
claimed, ‘spingeva i deputati laburisti verso questi luoghi che da anni la
letteratura internazionale si ostina a presentare come una macchia nella
tavolozza del paesaggio italiano.’105 Although the journalist argued elsewhere in
the article that the Sassi were a national disgrace, he expressed anger at the
perceived criticism from foreign sources and mounted a patriotic defence of the
fledgling Italian republic. First Mariotti claimed that the Labour deputies had
103
104
105
Nicoletti, p. 2
Ibid., p. 2
Delio Mariotti, ‘La città delle grotte’, La Stampa, 25 July 1950, p. 5
114
travelled to Matera surreptitiously without informing the Italian government.
This behaviour, he contended, was unacceptable. ‘Gli ospiti’, Mariotti argued,
‘devono osservare certe elementari regole di correttezza e non è affatto
apprezzabile che un invitato vada per prima cosa a vedere semi-interrati di un
palazzo allo scopo di muovere critiche al padrone di casa.’ 106 The implication is
that the Labour MPs, and the foreign media too, had broken protocol and
purposely travelled to the worst part of the country in order to criticize Italy
and the Italian people.
Furthermore, Mariotti questioned the foreign press’s motivation in
publishing articles and photos depicting the Sassi. The inference from the text is
that Italians had already understood that Matera’s cave homes constituted a
national shame and thus did not need foreign visitors to remind them of this
fact. In addition Mariotti put forward the idea that the international press had
failed to understand the nuanced historical, social and economic factors which
had resulted in the construction and continued inhabitation of Matera’s cave
homes. For this reason, the journalist argued, it was unfair ‘attribuire alla
giovane Repubblica italiana l’onta dei “Sassi”, se consideriamo che il governo De
Gasperi ha affrontato la grossa questione del Mezzogiorno proprio nel momento
più critico della storia italiana, all’indomani di una disfattta che ha lasciato
rovine e debiti.’107 Instead the national shame associated with the Sassi,
according to Mariotti, should have been blamed on previous governments and
the Fascist regime in particular, which had tried to cover up Matera’s housing
106
107
Ibid., p. 5
Ibid., p. 5
115
problems through press censorship.108 The article implies that the foreign press
had focused on the Sassi due to a sense of morbid curiosity. This had
subsequently resulted in unjustified criticism of Italy and its people on the
international stage. Mariotti’s article, however, offered no concrete reference to
specific foreign press articles about Matera or the opinions of the British Labour
MPs following their impromptu visit to the Sassi. Rather it appears to have been
a projection of how ‘international civil society’ viewed Italy and Italians in the
context of post-war Matera.109 The implication is that the Labour MPs had been
emotionally insensitive towards an Italian national shame. They had failed to
understand the gravity of the situation and thus got their emotions wrong. The
apparent insensitivity that the Labour MPs displayed during their visit to
Matera, therefore, augmented the ‘ought to’ force of the emotional scenario that
Mariotti presented for the article’s implied Italian audience.
It should be noted, moreover, that Mariotti wrote his article in the
context of De Gasperi’s first visit to Matera in May 1950. This event was used to
promote the DC’s twin programme for southern Italy: land reform and the Cassa
per il Mezzogiorno. Furthermore, De Gasperi announced that the Christian
Democrats would finally tackle the problem of the Sassi. In the context of ideas
of national shame, Mariotti’s article implies that government intervention at
108
109
Ibid., p. 5
The foreign media’s interest in the Sassi was also directly referenced in Nanno Sampietro’s
1952 article published in the Turin-based newspaper Il Popolo Nuovo. The report, entitled ‘I
sedicimila dei “Sassi” avranno una casa al sole’, was written to promote the construction of
La Martella, an UNRRA-CASAS sponsored village designed to rehouse two-hundred families
from the Sassi. Sampietro claimed that ‘i giornalisti americani e svedesi che vengono in Italia,
a Roma, immancabilimente scendono a Matera, e a Matera si buttano nei Sassi.’ The article
argued that foreign visitors to the Sassi were both enthralled and appalled in equal measure.
They found the lives of Matera’s cave dwellers as spellbinding, but at the same time branded
the Sassi ‘una vergogna dei nostri tempi, una macchia.’ See Nando Sampietro, ‘Lettere dal
Sud. I sedicimila dei “Sassi” avranno una casa al sole’, Il Popolo Nuovo, 13 April 1952, p. 3.
116
Matera would save face internationally and thus restore a sense of national
pride.110 Emilio Colombo, the DC deputy for Potenza, made a similar point
during his speech at Matera following De Gasperi’s first visit to the Sassi. He
argued that: ‘in questo periodo così difficile [De Gasperi] ha saputo dimostrare
all’Italia e al mondo che vi erano nel nostro popolo disgraziato ancora tante
energie nascoste da poter compiere una opera di ricostruzione che ha
meravigliato il mondo.’111 Colombo’s speech made it clear that, in his opinion,
Italy was a disgraced nation both internationally and at home following twenty
years of Fascist rule and the country’s disastrous involvement in the Second
World War. The reconstruction process had shown the world that, in fact,
Italians were capable of great things. Official sources and press articles
sympathetic to the DC government presented the problem of the Sassi as the
next step in rebuilding a new Italy and thus restoring a sense of national pride.
Mariotti’s article and the emotional scenarios that it looked to communicate to
the reader need to be viewed in this context.
Writing about national shame and the Risorgimento, Silvana Patriarca
argues that:
The foreigner’s gaze had an important role in the very constitution of the
patriotic Italians’ self-perceptions and sense of self as a people … Italian
patriots were intimately aware of this external gaze and they somewhat
internalized it. Feeling embarrassment and shame at the condition of
their country, they saw themselves through the mirror provided by the
foreigners’ eyes.112
110
111
112
Mariotti, p. 5
Oronzo Valentini, ‘De Gasperi “Esploratore della Lucania” ha riconfermato al Mezzogiorno la
solidarietà della nazione’, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 24 July 1950, p. 2
Patriarca, ‘A Patriotic Emotion’, p. 139
117
In the case of post-war Matera, this external gaze appears to have been an
Italian projection of what foreign visitors thought about the Sassi rather than a
response to the city being dubbed a national shame in the international press.
Nonetheless the patriotic narratives examined above reveal the images of the
new Republic and of the Italian people that the two journalists in question
wished to convey to their readers. These descriptions illustrate that the notions
of national shame presented were politically charged, normative concepts that
looked to define the values to which the Italian nation should aspire. Both Gatto
and Mariotti presented themselves as defenders of Italy’s honour attempting to
restore damaged national pride. The emotional scenarios they created,
however, were very different. Gatto expressed anger and frustration at the
apparent lack of shame towards the Sassi that he perceived amongst Italians
and the Christian Democrat government in particular. Mariotti, in contrast,
conveyed a sense of wounded national pride. His article can be read as an
attempt to reaffirm a sense of belief in the Italian people and the new Republic
through the perceived defamation of Italy in the foreign press. The political
convictions of each writer and the newspapers that published their articles
clearly influenced how they interacted with the perceived foreign opinions of
the Sassi and the implied audience for both articles. Moreover, ideological
considerations influenced the attribution of blame for the living conditions
witnessed at Matera. Both sides of the Cold War political divide implicitly
accused each other of failing to express the correct emotions in relation to
Matera. The easiest way for each author to illustrate that they were ‘good’
patriots was to show how their political opponents were getting national shame
wrong. Despite these differences Gatto and Mariotti conveyed one broadly
118
shared narrative: the Sassi constituted a national shame for Italians and swift
action was needed in order to restore a sense of national pride.
Housing, morality, and national shame
Narratives of national shame in the context of the Sassi were also generated
through links made between housing conditions and morality in a number of
press articles and official documents. Not only were Matera’s cave homes
depicted as an abomination to any self-respecting modern country because of
their inadequate hygiene levels, it was widely argued that they fostered
immorality and social degradation too. The implication was that impoverished
families living in a single room would engage in incestuous sexual relations. 113
In addition to the perceived threat of incest there was the fact that people
shared their homes with livestock. Disease was thought to be the main threat
from people and animals living under the same roof.114 Post-war descriptions of
the Sassi, therefore, echo discourses that were prevalent in the nineteenth
century when so-called slum housing was equated with loose morals and social
degradation, as outlined in detail below. Examining expressions of national
shame and narratives linking housing conditions and social depravity will help
Speaking in an interview carried out in November 1952 the head of Matera’s carabiniere
commented that ‘la promiscuità in cui vive la gente … qui si verificano molti reati portati
dalla promiscuità delle famiglie e si è verificato il caso di qualche incesto o vizio
omosessuale, questi sono in una certa frequenza, portati appunto dalla miseria che costringe
questa gente a vivere nello stesso ambiente.’ See Atti della commissione parlamentare di
inchiesta sulla miseria in Italia e sui mezzi per combatterla, Indagini delle delegazioni
parlamentari. La miseria in alcune zone depresse, vol. VII, Camera dei Deputati, 1953, p. 208.
114 Housing farm animals in the family home, however, was not uncommon for most Italian
agricultural families in the first-half of the Twentieth Century and beyond. The death or theft
of a mule could render a farming family destitute. Therefore, it was normal for agricultural
families to keep their prize possessions inside their homes. See Ginsborg, p. 33. In addition,
the UNRRA-CASAS team that carried out a study of the Sassi in the early 1950s believed that
cohabitation between people and animals could spread disease, in particular malaria.
Although these claims were unfounded, they arguably help to explain references to the
perceived danger that farm animals posed to Sassi residents. See Friedrich G. Friedmann,
Miseria e dignità, Il Mezzogiorno nei primi anni Cinquanta, Edizioni Cultura della Pace, San
Domenico di Fiesole, 1996, p. 70.
113
119
to shed light on the moral worlds and motivations of a section of Italy’s postwar public sphere - or those of the specific commentators in question at the
very least. Moreover, contextualising these emotional scenarios should provide
a greater understanding of why the Sassi generated such a large amount of
patriotic narratives at that specific moment in time.
Writing in the Neapolitan-based and centrist newspaper Il Mattino in
May 1950, the journalist Gino Spera made reference to the moral and hygienic
problems that the Sassi were perceived to embody. He wrote that 1,688 homes
in Matera also served as stables. As a result people lived in ‘una sconcia
promiscuità con le bestie oltre che all’immoralità della vita in comune di uomini
e donne, sia pure della stessa famiglia, e non sempre, in un unico vano neanche
sufficiente per una sola bestia.’ 115 Similar sentiments were expressed a year
later in an article from the Giornale del Mezzogiorno written to mark the start of
Matera’s risanamento programme. An interior photo of a cave home was
accompanied by the caption: ‘Impressionante documentazione di una vergogna
nazionale che sta per sparire.’ 116 The perceived link between housing
conditions and morality was used to heighten the sense of national shame that
the author looked to convey: ‘Ogni mattina la donna fa uscire dai “sassi” l’asino
che normalmente vive con gli uomini. Selvaggia promiscuità che offende la
dignità civile e morale dell’individuo e crea gravissimi problemi sociali, come la
tubercolosi, la mortalità infantile, l’abbrutimento, la degradazione.’ 117 The link
between housing, health, as well as social and moral wellbeing is explicitly
115
116
117
Gino Spera, ‘Zellerbach visita Matera’, Il Mattino, 13 May 1950, p. 2
Cesare Marroni, ‘Cristo s’è mosso da Eboli. Lo stato “esattore e carabiniere” cambia volto in
Lucania’, Il Giornale del Mezzogiorno, 17 September 1951, p. 1
Ibid., p. 1
120
made in both texts. The implication is that the Sassi’s housing conditions were
an affront to Italian moral values and thus constituted a national shame.
The perceived connection between housing conditions, moral wellbeing
and national shame appears to have originated in official circles. Following his
visit to Matera in April 1950, Mario Cotellessa (Alto commissario per l’igiene e la
sanità) wrote a letter to Achille Marazza (Ministro del Lavoro e della Previdenza
Sociale) and Giulio Andreotti, then undersecretary for state, in which he
detailed the housing conditions he had witnessed amongst the Sassi. Cotellessa
urged Marazza to explore the possibility of constructing alternative housing at
Matera to rehouse the families that were living in ‘primitive condizioni dei
cavernicoli dell’età della pietra.’118 The Sassi, Cotellessa continued, ‘ci disonora
sotto l’aspetto sociale, morale ed igienico .’119 The fact that different generations
of the one family lived in a single room with their animals appears to have been
the primary source of this shame: ‘la casa di abitazione della famiglia materana
ed ivi sono contenuti, in un’ impressionante promiscuità: la cucina, i letti dei
genitori e figli, i pochi miseri mobili e, separata da un basso muro di tufo, la
stalla dell’asino e del mulo.’120 The implication from Cotellessa’s letter is that
the Sassi embodied the Italian nation’s failure to live up to a set of perceived
values. ‘Ci disonora’ implies that the eyes of the world were on Italy and Matera.
The ‘us’ suggests that Cotellessa saw himself as part of an imagined community
of well-meaning citizens that was able to recognise right from wrong in a
national context, i.e. ‘good’ patriots. Acknowledging national shame, as Sara
Ahmed has argued, means that a narrative of national recovery can begin. The
118
119
120
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121
nation can move towards the putative values that define it and national pride
can thus be restored.121 This process is arguably reflected in Cotellessa’s
description of living conditions in the Sassi.
Over two million Italians were unemployed in 1948. Moreover, the
country was in the midst of a housing crisis. The Italian government identified
the building sector as a means for resolving both problems and passed the legge
n. 3, Provvedimenti per incrementare l’occupazione operaia. Case per lavoratori
on the 28 February 1948. This legislation is better known as the Ina-Casa or
Fanfani plan. Over 350,000 housing units were built from 1949-1963.122
Writing about the Sassi in a letter to the Minister of Employment and Social
Welfare dated 5 May 1950, Giulio Andreotti expressed similar sentiments to
Cotellessa and called for new houses to be built at Matera under the Ina-Casa
programme. Andreotti described the living conditions at Matera not only as
deplorable but as immoral too.
In quelle primitive dimore vivono famiglie di braccianti e di contadini
molto miseri, spesso composte di numerosi elementi, conviventi in unico
angusto spazio, dove la vita domestico-familiare si svolge in immorale
promiscuità di sessi non solo, ma anche in antigienica coesistenza con il
bestiame da lavoro e con gli arnesi del mestiere.123
Like the texts cited above, the implication was that impoverished families living
in a single room would engage in incestuous sexual relations. Andreotti copied
the above phrase verbatim from a letter written on 27 April 1950 by F. De
121
122
123
Ahmed, pp. 108-110
For further information on the Ina-Casa programme see Paolo Di Biagi, ‘La “città pubblica” e
l’Ina-Casa’, in Paolo Di Biagi (ed.), La Grande Ricostruzione, Donzelli Editore, Rome, 2001, pp.
3-33; and Stephanie Zeier Pilat, Reconstructing Italy. The Ina-Casa Neighbourhoods of the
Postwar Era, Unpublished PhD thesis, The University of Michigan, 2009.
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122
Giorgis, head of Matera’s carabinieri.124 In addition De Giorgis had warned of the
perceived political dangers that Matera’s troglodyte homes had fostered. The
letter claimed that the PCI had already begun using Matera’s inadequate
housing situation in its political propaganda. Furthermore, De Giorgis implied
that the Sassi’s living conditions were having concrete effects on residents’
political and spiritual wellbeing: ‘nei “Sassi” … vivono prevalentamente i
comunisti più accesi e gli evangelici più fanatici ed è là che essi svolgono la loro
opera con successi non indifferenti, speculando sullo stato di miseria e di
indigenza morale e materiale di quella popolazione.’125 The immorality that
inadequate housing conditions had produced, De Giorgis claimed, threatened to
fuel social and religious deviancy. Swift government intervention was
recommended in order to counteract the apparent moral, political and spiritual
danger that Matera’s cave homes posed to the local population.126 These
apparent fears over the links between housing and morality in official circles
were communicated in the months leading up to Alcide De Gasperi’s visit to
Matera in July 1950. The patriotic narratives created in the context of post-war
Matera reached their apex in the period 1950-1952. The newspaper sources
collected for this study suggest that the perceived links between housing and
morality were one of the factors that provided momentum to the idea that
Matera constituted a national shame and saw this concept become a
commonplace in political debate in the period 1950-1952.
Expressions of shame over living conditions amongst Matera’s cave
homes and concern over their impact on residents’ social wellbeing were not
124
125
126
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123
limited to catholic commentators. On 6 March 1951 the PCI deputy for Potenza,
Michele Bianco, presented a draft law for the Sassi to parliament. It made
reference to the moral danger that he believed the city’s cave homes fostered.
The text of the white paper noted that demanding special legislation for a
specific town when Italy was experiencing an acute housing crisis could seem
foolhardy and unjust. However, he argued that the Sassi’s housing problems
urgently needed to be resolved ‘per ragioni di umanità e di dignità nazionale’. 127
Thus the Sassi were not merely a housing problem according to Bianco. They
were a source of national shame which needed to be tackled. Bianco presented
an emotionally charged description of living conditions at Matera to promote
his draft law. Similar to the sources cited above, the text implied that there was
a direct link between housing conditions and morality:
Quando si parla dei “Sassi” di Matera bisogna pensare alle bolgie
infernali e poi moltiplicarne l’orrore per dieci nella certezza tuttavia di
rimanere sempre al di sotto della realtà. Bisogna pensare ad abitazioni
che sono le stesse che esistevano cinque mila anni fa; bisogna pensare
alle tane che i trogloditi di cinque mila anni fa scavarono con le unghie
nella roccia, nella quale si insinuano, le une sotto le altre, in tutte le
direzioni, in salita e in discesa, verso il centro della terra … una
popolazione che si aggira intorno alle 18 mila anime, e con essa muli,
asini, maiali, galline, in un’atmosfera che mozza il respiro ed in una
promiscuità di sessi, di età, di uomini e di animali tale da suscitare orrore
e ribellione! Onorevoli colleghi! I “Sassi” di Matera costituiscono una
piaga che mortifica ed avvilisce ogni più elementare senso di umanità e
rappresentano un marchio di infamia per la civiltà e la dignità del nostro
Paese! Voi vorrete affrettarvi a cancellarlo facendo buona accoglienza
alla presente proposta di legge.128
Although less direct than Andreotti’s description cited above, the text of
Bianco’s special law presents Matera as pre-modern in order to promote the
127
128
Michele Bianco, Risanamento dei quartieri popolari dei “Sassi” di Matera e costruzione di
abitazioni per contadini, operai ed artigiani, Camera dei Deputati, Proposta di legge n. 1882, 6
March 1951, p. 1
Ibid., p. 2
124
need for direct state intervention. The draft law infers that people of different
sexes and generations living in a single room with their farm animals infringed
upon the perceived values of the Italian nation. The Sassi constituted a moral
issue and a source of ignominy for the fledgling Republic. Moving beyond the
rhetorical skills that Bianco clearly employed to try and shame the reader into
action, the text of the draft law suggests that the moral norms within which he
was operating were remarkably similar to those of the journalists and DC
politicians cited above. In order to understand Bianco’s description of the Sassi
it is necessary to briefly examine the moral codes that the broad catholic
movement and the Italian Communist Party looked to convey to their followers
in the post-war period.
The family was a fundamental reference point in post-war Italian politics
as Lesley Caldwell has cogently argued.129 The catholic movement claimed that
the family was under threat from communism. They saw the family as one of
Italy’s most important institutions and the Christian Democrats as the
defenders of tradition. The family, however, was also a fundamental issue for
the Italian left.130 Good communists were expected to defend traditional family
values. The family unit was to be valued and protected. It was seen as the
foundation of moral and social order.131 Sandro Bellassai has argued that this
stance was in part an attempt to counteract accusations that communism
fostered sexual immorality, but he contends that it also reflected the
129
130
131
Lesley Caldwell, ‘The Family in the Fifties: A Notion in Conflict with a Reality’, in Duggan and
Wagstaff, p. 151
Ibid., p. 152
This point is reflected in an article in L’Unità from May 1953. A photo depicting a family
inside one of Matera’s cave homes accompanied the text which urged female voters to reject
the Christian Democrats who, it was claimed, had failed to provide suitable homes for
Matera’s agricultural workers and their families. See ‘I d.c. nemici della famiglia’, L’Unità, 9
May 1953, p. 6.
125
importance that rank and file party members placed on ‘normal’ family life.132
Eliminate capitalism, it was argued, and you would remove the main cause
behind the breakup of families - as evidenced in the depiction of Soviet society
in the communist press. Socialism was equated with healthy family life.
Marriage rates had doubled in Russia, it was claimed, since the establishment of
the USSR and the sanctity of the family had therefore been reinforced. 133
Furthermore, the PCI’s attitude towards sexual morality in the post-war
period was conservative. Mixing of the sexes was viewed as dangerous and
unseemly, sexual promiscuity was linked to a lack of character and
homosexuality was seen both deviant and decadent. Loose sexual morals, it was
claimed, marked an individual out as untrustworthy and, as a result, of no use to
the Party. Restraint, it was argued, needed to be shown in the context of sexual
desire. The Party was more important than physical impulses.134 The PCI’s
stance towards sexual promiscuity reflected Lenin’s glass-of-water theory.
Lenin rejected sexual promiscuity and instead recommended self-control and
self-discipline amongst comrades. The concept of free love was viewed as a
bourgeois invention and a threat to the moral wellbeing of Party members.135
These points help to contextualize the apparent similarity between Bianco’s
description of living conditions in the Sassi and those produced in official
132
133
134
135
Bellassai, pp. 146-147. Alleged links between communism and sexual immorality had been
made in anti-communist circles from the time of the Russian revolution onwards. The
emphasis that the Italian communist party placed on morality was in part an attempt to
counteract claims that Bolshevism fostered deviant sexual practices. See Leo Goretti, ‘Irma
Bandiera and Maria Goretti: Gender Role Models for Communist Girls in Italy (1945-56)’,
Twentieth Century Communism, (2012), no. 4, p. 20.
Bellassai, pp. 146-147
Writing in 1949, Pietro Secchia, vicesecretary of the PCI, declared his opposition to mixed
schools claiming that ‘la paglia accanto al fuoco brucia’. Quoted in Bellassai, pp. 138-139.
Ibid., p. 139
126
sources cited above. There was, however, ideological divergence regarding the
alleged causes of moral decay in post-war Italy.
The DC argued that communism was the main threat to Western
Christian values and the sanctity of the family. The accusation that Bolshevism
fostered sexual deviancy was a recurring theme in catholic propaganda. The
Catholic Church, moreover, adopted an aggressive stance towards communism.
On 1 July 1949 Pope Pius XII issued a decree excommunicating any Catholics
that collaborated with communist organizations. The PCI, however,
acknowledged that the majority of Italians, including communist sympathisers,
were catholic. Therefore the party hierarchy decided that it could not afford to
attack the central tenets of Catholicism itself without risking the loss of
potential voters. Stalin personally instructed Togliatti to refrain from targeting
the catholic religion explicitly. Instead he advised the party to highlight how the
structure and wealth of organized Christianity contradicted its spiritual
message of peace and fraternity. The PCI, therefore, had to formulate a strategy
for countering its main opponent without resorting to anti-Catholic rhetoric.136
The Communist Party instead focused its moral outrage on capitalism
and the supposed twin enemies of the working class: the Italian bourgeoisie and
the United States of America.137 Capitalism was depicted not only as unjust and
oppressive but as immoral too. The alleged decadent lifestyle and values of the
Italian bourgeoisie as well as the moral degeneracy of capitalist society’s
symbolic home, the USA, provided the ‘evidence’ for these claims. The
136
137
Goretti, ‘Irma Bandiera’, p. 20
Ibid., p. 25. For depictions of the USA in PCI propaganda see also Leo Goretti, ‘Truman’s
Bombs and De Gasperi’s Hooked-Nose: Images of the Enemy in the Communist Press for
Young People after 18 April 1948’, Modern Italy, vol. 16 (2011), no. 2, pp. 159-177.
127
communist press routinely described the Italian bourgeoisie as sexually
promiscuous while American society was depicted as being amongst the most
morally repugnant on the planet. Mental health and social problems were
reported to be rife in the USA and were in large part attributed to the
acceptance of loose sexual morals.138 America, therefore, was depicted as a
degenerate society which illustrated the moral dangers of capitalist civilization.
Communist sources presented the Christian Democrats as internal allies of the
USA and therefore of capitalism. Thus they were represented as a threat to
Italy’s moral wellbeing.139 The different moral worlds of the DC and the Italian
Communist Party help to explain the links made between housing and morality
in the sources outlined above. Although the causes of alleged moral degeneracy
were divided upon ideological lines, arguably the emphasis placed on the family
unit in the wake of the Second World War, as well as attitudes towards sexual
morality directly influenced the discourses of national shame, housing, and
morality produced in the context of post-war Matera.
Two supplemental factors need to be taken into consideration when
examining the links made between housing and immorality in descriptions of
post-war Matera. They are Europe’s post-war housing crisis, and discourses of
housing, hygiene and morality that had developed in Europe from the
eighteenth-century onwards. The issue of housing in post-war Italy is arguably
crucial to understanding discourses of Matera produced during the scope of this
study. Western Europe faced an acute housing shortage in the immediate postwar period and the problem was keenly felt in Italy. Housing was one of the
138
139
Bellassai, pp. 140-145
Goretti, ‘Truman’s Bombs’, pp. 159-177
128
primary social and economic problems that the Italian state faced in the
immediate aftermath of World War Two.140 There had already been a housing
shortage in Italy in the early part of the twentieth century. This shortfall,
however, was further exacerbated by a number of factors in the post-war
period. Over three million homes were believed to have been damaged or
destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. Moreover, the Italian
population grew by 11 per cent from 1937 to 1952.141 The return of demobbed
soldiers and Italian citizens from former colonies placed further pressure on the
existing housing stock. Istat estimated that in 1945 there were 1.38 people for
every room in Italy and that by 1947 Italy faced a shortfall of 9 million rooms.
Germany and Holland were the only western European countries which faced a
greater housing shortage.142 Unsurprisingly, therefore, the concept of the home
played an important role in post-war Italian society. This idea was linked both
to perceptions of the country’s past and future. The home symbolized perceived
notions of Italy’s traditional family values as well as the country’s move towards
‘modernity’, be that viewed through a communist or catholic lens. Home
ownership became an important aspiration for large sections of Italian society
in the post-war period.143 In the context of Italy’s acute post-war housing crisis,
140
141
142
143
According to the Inchiesta sulla miseria carried out by a parliamentary commission between
1951-1952 approximately 6,200,000 Italians were living in subhuman conditions in the
early 1950s. See Paolo Braghin (ed.), Inchiesta sulla miseria in Italia (1951-1952), Einaudi,
Turin, 1978, p. xv.
Paul F. Wendt, ‘Post Word-War-II Housing Policies in Italy’, Land Economics, vol. 38 (1962),
no. 2, pp. 113-133
See Emanuele Bernardi, ‘Politiche per la casa e aiuti americani dall’Unrra al Piano Marshall
(1944-1950)’, in Pier Luigi Bollini (ed.), Quaderni Degasperiani per la storia contemporanea,
Rubbettino Editore, Saveria Mannelli, 2009, pp. 161-162; and Wendt, pp. 113-133.
See Penny Sparke, ‘‘A Home for Everbody?’: Design, Ideology and the Culture of the Home in
Italy, 1945-72’, in Zygmunt G. Baranski (ed.), Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy, Macmillan,
Basingstoke, 1990, pp. 225-226.
129
Matera’s cave homes were depicted in communist and catholic sources as one of
Italian civilization’s lowest points.
Official data from the post-war period, however, suggests that living
conditions at Matera were ostensibly comparable with many other parts of
post-war Italy. According to the 1951 census there were an estimated 218,642
families living in 193,565 substandard dwellings which included baracche and
cave homes. The majority of dwellings judged to be inadequate were located in
southern Italy and the Islands, but there were also a large number of families
living in substandard accommodation in northern and central Italy in rural
areas but also in urban peripheries.144 The Inchiesta sulla miseria in Italia e sui
mezzi per combatterla (an interparty parliamentary inquiry into poverty levels
in Italy carried out between 1951-1953) calculated that a total of 802,000
families in southern Italy and the Islands were living in poverty.145 This data
suggests that apart from the dramatic setting of the Sassi and its large
agglomeration of cave homes, the standard of living in post-war Matera was the
norm in many parts of post-war Italy rather than the exception.146
144
145
146
In the context of individual cities there were 33,617 families in Rome living in 27,915 homes
judged to be inadequate; in Milan 6,114 families were housed in 5,944 substandard
dwellings; in Turin there were 1,396 families living in 1,345 inadequate homes; in Genoa
there were 5,446 families living in 4,929 substandard homes; and an estimated 2,332
families were living in 2,241 substandard dwellings in Bologna. Moreover, 10,392 families
were living in 9,974 substandard dwellings in Catanzaro, and there were 11,371 families
living in 10,896 substandard homes in Reggio Calabria. In contrast, in Matera 1,595 families
were living in 1,575 substandard homes. See Istituto centrale di statistica, IX censimento
generale della popolazione e rilevazione delle abitazioni. III censimento generale dell’industria
e del commercio, 4 e 5 novembre 1951, primi risultati generali dei censimenti : popolazione
residente e presente, abitazioni e stanze, ditte, unità locali e addetti, Abete, Rome, 1954, pp.
121-124.
For data on poverty levels in Italy see Atti della commissione parlamentare di inchiesta sulla
miseria in Italia e sui mezzi per combatterla, Indagini tecniche. Condizioni di vita delle classi
misere, vol. II, Camera dei deputati, Rome, 1954, p. 65.
This point is not meant to downplay the material hardship of life for the 15,000 people living
in the Sassi in the immediate post-war period. Instead the data on post-war living standards
shows that life amongst Matera’s cave homes was less exceptional than many contemporary
130
Furthermore, the links between morality and housing found in post-war
descriptions of the Sassi need to be examined in the context of discourses of
hygiene and urban planning which first emerged in the eighteenth century.147
Overcrowding in urban slums was believed to foster not just the spread of
infectious disease, but also immorality, crime, incest, fornication and antisocial
behaviour. Unsanitary housing was also considered a threat to the sanctity of
the home and a potential breeding ground for revolutionary fervour amongst
the poor. The concept that housing could shape morality was prevalent amongst
philanthropic housing societies, e.g. the Peabody Trust and the East End
Dwelling Company in Victorian London. It was argued that the moral character
of the indigent could be improved through their organization into family units.
The segregation of family members into different bedrooms and the segregation
of the sexes were viewed as the solution to this problem. As a result concerns
over morality directly influenced house design. 148
The emergence of links between housing, hygiene, morality and urban
planning in an Italian context can be traced to the establishment of public health
and sanitation legislation in 1888. This law stemmed from the introduction of
147
148
sources claimed. The Sassi’s distinctiveness was its large agglomeration of cave homes while
its reputation as a national shame was a discursive construct.
Michel Foucault has linked the emergence of discourses of hygiene and morality in urban
planning to the establishment of state medicine in the late eighteenth century. This, he
claims, resulted in the standardization of medical knowledge; the collection of statistics on
local, regional and state levels; the creation of medical officers for individual territories and
administrative organizations for regulating doctors. Moreover, Foucault contends that the
development of state medicine in late-eighteenth-century Europe had a direct impact on
urban planning with the emergence of what he called urban medicine. The growth of urban
centres and the development of an urban proletariat in the nineteenth century created social
tension between an emerging working class and the bourgeoisie. Discourses of ‘urban fear’,
the ‘fear of the city’ and the ‘pathogenic city’ emerged in the same time period. They were
linked to concerns over overcrowding, urban epidemics, the construction of factories and
workshops and the height of buildings. See Rabinow and Rose, pp. 327-330.
See Jos Boys, Frances Bradshaw, and Jane Darke et al., ‘House design and women’s roles’, in
Matrix Book Group (eds.), Making Space. Women and the man-made environment, Pluto Press
Ltd, London, 1984, pp. 55-80.
131
special legislation for Naples in response to the cholera epidemic of 1884 and
1885. The Legge per la tutela della igiene e della sanità pubblica sought to
quantify all urban centres with more than 20,000 inhabitants. This examination
of the city marked a sea change in Italian urban planning. Street names became
codified and maps of what had previously been terra incognita for civil
authorities created dividing lines between affluent districts and so-called slums.
Armed with detailed impressions of urban layouts, Italian town planners
believed that their work could shape the hygiene and morality of a city for the
better. Urban planning and improvement schemes aimed to eliminate economic
and moral deprivation as well as provide new housing.149
This had a direct effect on Italian urban planning. It took on an
ideological and moral dimension through the emergence of the concept of
sventramento. Adapted from the medical term for disembowelment,
sventramento came to mean the demolition of slums and the widening of streets
in urban planning and renewal. The term implies that the city is a body. Slums
were seen as tumours that needed to be removed surgically. The health and
hygiene measures undertaken by the Italian state at the end of the nineteenth
century left an indelible mark on the country’s public administration. Public
hygiene offices were established, hygiene regulations were introduced into
building and the concept of moral hygiene permeated urban planning theories.
The availability of light and fresh air became central to ‘hygienic’ urban
planning designs from 1888 onwards. The norms of what constituted ‘healthy’
149
Guido Zucconi, La città contesa. Dagli ingegneri sanitari agli urbanisti (1885-1942), Jaca Book,
Milan, 1989, pp. 18-20
132
accommodation were defined scientifically and bureaucratically.150 Late
nineteenth-century Italy also saw the invention of public health engineering
with the publication of the magazine L’ingegneria sanitaria in 1891. The
magazine defined public health engineers as doctors of the city whose ailments
they should study and cure. Using the techniques of positivist science, public
health engineers studied water supplies, housing conditions and compiled
statistics on material conditions with the aim of improving hygiene standards.
The model for this procedure was provided by the Piano di risanamento
introduced in Naples in 1885. The city was studied in detail. A full population
census was carried out and the housing conditions of tenements documented.
Guido Zucconi notes that there was an ideological change in Italian urban
planning in 1929 under Fascism. Town planners became more concerned with
blending the modern and the classical than debates over public health and
hygiene. There were also technological changes with the introduction of plans,
elevations, and end views rather than the overhead maps previously used.
However, the concept of diradamento edilizio (literally meaning thinning or
pruning) used in the 1930s was simply sventramento by another name. Urban
planners still believed that their work could a priori modify moral and social
conditions.151 In the context of post-war Matera it is notable that the term
risanamento was used to describe the rehousing programme for the city’s cave
dwellers. Although in the context of urban planning this term can be translated
as ‘slum clearances’, it derives from a medical term meaning to cure. The
implication is that slum clearances were a means of curing the city from its
150
151
Ibid., pp. 30-33
Ibid., pp. 35-153. This concept was still current in the post-war period, as will be seen in the
next chapter which examines the implementation of the special law for the Sassi.
133
social ills through redevelopment. Based on the sources examined above it
seems apparent that discourses linking housing conditions to morality persisted
in Italy during the immediate post-war period, albeit refracted through the lens
of two ideologies bitterly divided along Cold War lines. Fears over housing
conditions and the family were arguably exacerbated by the destruction
inflicted during the Second World War and the subsequent housing crisis.
Matera’s Sassi provided a canvass upon which these uncertainties could be
projected and intertwined with narratives of national shame and divergent
political identities. Moreover, the city provided a testing ground for theories of
social progress through architecture and urban planning which were
implemented through the first special law for Matera in the 1950s.
It is difficult to ascertain the impact that narratives of housing, morality,
and national shame had on popular attitudes towards the Sassi at a local level in
the 1950s. However, recent interviews carried out with residents that were
moved from the Sassi to new housing as part of Matera’s risanamento
programme suggest that notions of national shame created in the immediate
post-war period have had a lasting impact on local attitudes towards the Sassi.
Three different studies found that former Sassi residents were often reluctant
and embarrassed to speak about their past lives and in a number of cases
denied that their families had ever lived amongst Matera’s cave homes. The
implication is that the emotional scenarios created in the 1950s have had a
134
residual impact on the collective memory of life in the Sassi amongst former
residents.152
It is evident that post-war Italy’s broad catholic and communist
movements constituted two distinct emotional communities. Their moral
worlds were ostensibly opposed, but there was a shared belief in the
importance of the family and a rejection of loose sexual morals. The causes of
Matera’s apparent moral degeneracy, however, were attributed to opposing
sources. For communists the blame lay with capitalism and the Christian
Democrats who were regarded as the political bedfellows of the USA. In
contrast, Catholics viewed international communism as the greatest threat to
their moral world and references to the dangers of Bolshevism were frequent in
official accounts of the Sassi. There was clearly competition amongst the
catholic and communist politicians and journalists cited above to appropriate
ideas of national shame and use them against their political opponents. By
claiming that their political rivals had got their patriotism wrong, each camp
could look to legitimate their own reading of Italian nationalism. However, fears
over the link between housing and morality shared by the communist and
catholic commentators examined suggest that they were also part of a larger
supra-political Italian emotional community. Arguably Italy’s post-war housing
crisis, the emotional and material damage of the Second World War, and
discourses of housing and hygiene had a direct impact on reaffirming the value
placed on the home and the sanctity of the family for the Italian population.
There was a broadly shared narrative about the impact that housing conditions
152
See Toxey, ‘Via Media’, pp. 73-76; Zuccari, pp. 446-460; and Del Parigi and Demetrio, pp. 2627.
135
could have on people’s moral wellbeing. In the context of Matera, writers and
politicians from different political backgrounds constructed a similar discourse
in which the Sassi symbolized post-war Italy’s housing crisis. This narrative was
given further weight through the links made between housing and moral
wellbeing.
De Gasperi’s tears
Matera, con i suoi ‘Sassi lasciò una traccia profonda nell’animo sensibile
del Presidente. Tornato a Roma non mancò di esternare la sua
commozione e si adoperò in ogni modo per il risanamento edilizio della
città lucana. ‘Quei tuguri – disse – quelle tane stringono il cuore’. E ci
raccontò in dettaglio il caso emblematico della famiglia del reduce
Francesco Contino, da lui visitata ai ‘Sassi’ ascoltandone la storia
quotidiana desolante di lavoro durissimo e di sacrifice, affrontata però
con una tenacia e una speranza che non dovevano essere deluse. 153
This description of Alcide De Gasperi’s first visit to Matera on 23 July 1950
appeared in Giulio Andreotti’s book De Gasperi e la ricostruzione published in
1974. The short work is essentially a hagiography of De Gasperi’s post-war
political career, but it is noteworthy that the Italian prime minister’s two visits
to Matera were used to bookend a section on southern Italy. After years of
rhetoric from previous governments, the book argued, De Gasperi had finally
managed to tackle the age-old problem of the Sassi. 154 Andreotti paid particular
attention to De Gasperi’s emotional reaction during his first visit to Matera
which, the book claimed, was central to the decision to formulate the special
law for the Sassi. References to the Italian prime minister’s emotions, during
and after his visit to a number of cave homes in July 1950, are also found in the
153
154
Giulio Andreotti, De Gasperi e la ricostruzione, Edizioni cinque lune, Rome, 1974, p. 101
Ibid., p. 101
136
contemporary press coverage. The shared narrative of these articles is that De
Gasperi’s deep sense of empathy prompted him to draw up special legislation
for Matera’s cave dwellers. These reports were framed within the context of
national shame and ideas of emotional norms in post-war Italy. Official media
coverage of the Italian Prime Minister’s visit to Matera in 1950 was used to
promote the Christian Democrats’ twin programme for southern Italy.155 In the
context of notions that Matera constituted a national shame, 1950 was also the
year in which this concept appeared more frequently in Italian press sources.
De Gasperi’s visit appears to have been one of the factors that increased the
circulation and regularity of this idea in press sources. This section will examine
why the journalists covering the story deemed the Italian Prime Minister’s
apparent tears to be significant at that moment in time and the historical
context which shaped how and why they communicated this story in the
national and regional press.
Writing in 1950 about De Gasperi’s first visit to Matera for La Gazzetta
del Mezzogiorno, Oronzo Valentini described the Italian Prime Minister’s visible
155
The concept of Matera as a symbol of the southern question became one of the key images
used in DC propaganda in the early 1950s to promote the need for agrarian reform and the
Cassa del Mezzogiorno. These points are exemplified in the official coverage of De Gasperi’s
visit to Matera on 23 July 1950. The living conditions of Sassi residents were used to justify
government reforms in southern Italy. See Giorgio Ceccherini, ‘La visita di De Gasperi in
Lucania’, Il Popolo, 25 July 1950, pp. 1 & 4 and La Settimana INCOM, Viaggio nel Mezzogiorno.
De Gasperi in Lucania (Italy, 1950). Roberto Rossellini also dramatized De Gasperi’s first visit
to Matera in Anno Uno, his hagiography of the DC leader. See Roberto Rossellini, Anno uno
(Italy, 1950). The PCI press presented a very different account of De Gasperi’s first visit to
Matera. An article published in L’Unità on 25 July 1950 claimed that there had been protests
against the Italian Prime Minister and that local police had resorted to confiscating a
caricature of De Gasperi from the local offices of the Socialist Party. Subsequently a number
of prominent Socialist and Communist activists had been arrested. See ‘Violenze della polizia
a Matera per festeggiare la visita di De Gasperi’, L’Unità, 25 July, 1950, p. 5. The archival
sources reveal that there was an altercation between the local police and local Communist
and Socialist Party members. Seven policemen and four civilians suffered slight injuries and
eight people were charged in relation to the incident. The archival sources also reveal that
2,015 members of Coldiretti were bussed to Matera to listen to De Gasperi’s speech. This
suggests that the visit was closely stagemanaged. See the material on De Gasperi’s first visit
to Matera in ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 178, fascicolo 1642, sottofascicolo II.
137
distress during a visit to the cave home of Vito Andrisano and his family: ‘De
Gasperi chiedeva notizie della loro vita, del loro lavoro, chiedeva
insistentemente con un senso di angoscia, quasi volesse imprimersi nella mente
e negli occhi il ricordo indelebile di uno spettacolo che ha avuto profonda eco
nel suo animo.’156 A photo of De Gasperi visiting one of Matera’s cave homes
accompanied the article. The Italian Prime Minister appears visibly
uncomfortable in the shot which depicts the interior of a cave home with the
silhouette of a mule in the background. The article noted that during the speech
given in Matera’s main square later the same day, De Gasperi referred to the
Sassi as ‘un deplorevole avanzo della nostra triste storia di secoli.’ 157 The
implication from the article is that Matera’s cave homes were a national
disgrace and that a mixture of empathy and shame had caused the Italian Prime
Minister’s emotional reaction.
Delio Mariotti also made direct reference to the Italian Prime Minister’s
emotional state upon witnessing living conditions in the Sassi in an article for
La Stampa. Mariotti claimed that ‘ci diceva De Gasperi alcune ore dopo la sua
visita alla cupa e fantastica città che il problema dei “sassi” afferra alla gola e
l’impeto di risolverlo sommuove il sangue in uno slancio generoso. (Il
presidente all’uscita da alcuni tuguri aveva le pupille umide.)’158 The article
frames De Gasperi’s apparent tears of compassion in the context of national
shame. Mariotti contends elsewhere in the article that the Sassi constitute a
national disgrace. The report ends, however, claiming that, with their twin
reform programme for the Mezzogiorno, the Christian Democrats have taken
156
157
158
Valentini, p. 1
Ibid., p. 2
Mariotti, p. 5
138
the first steps in tackling southern Italy’s social and economic problems.
Resolving Matera’s housing problems is presented as a key step in this
process.159
Reference to De Gasperi’s emotional response during his first visit to
Matera was also made in Giovanni Acquaviva’s article published in the Corriere
del Giorno on 24 July 1951. This piece was written to mark the news that the
Christian Democrats had decided to put special legislation for Matera before
parliament. The report claims that De Gasperi was moved to tears during his
visit to the Sassi.
Lo ricordiamo perfettamente De Gasperi durante le sue pereginazioni al
Sud, scendere fin giù nelle grotte dei ‘Sassi’ e toccare con mano la miseria
orripilante dei tuguri ove dieci persone con un asino e sette galline
alloggiavano nella stessa unica camera il cui tetto faceva da pavimento
ad un analogo tugurio sovrastante; lo ricordiamo pallido e quasi
scostante per quella sua natura di montanaro, commuoversi fino alle
lacrime al cospetto di così abominevole spettacolo.160
The article directly linked De Gasperi’s apparent emotional reaction to Matera’s
cave homes to his decision ‘coinvolgere massici interventi statali per eliminare
la inqualificabile vergogna dei “Sassi”, nel quadro della rinascita del
Mezzogiorno d’Italia proprio negli anni più duri e travagliati del dopoguerra.’161
Acquaviva therefore links De Gasperi’s tears to notions of national shame.
Moreover state intervention at Matera is framed in the context of the Christian
Democrats efforts to resolve southern Italy’s perceived social and economic
backwardness in comparison to northern Italy. The Sassi, it is implied, are a
symbol of the southern question which De Gasperi’s government have finally
159
160
161
Ibid., p. 5
Giovanni Acquaviva, ‘De Gasperi e Colombo per la redenzione di Matera’, Il Corriere del
Giorno, 24 July 1951, p. 1
Ibid., p. 1
139
resolved. It is clear, therefore, that the Italian Prime Minister’s apparent
emotional reaction to living conditions at Matera was incorporated into official
propaganda in the context of promoting the DC’s reform programme for
southern Italy.
It is impossible to know how genuine De Gasperi’s tears were during his
first visit to Matera. A more fruitful avenue of enquiry, therefore, is to discern
the reasons why De Gasperi’s apparent emotional reaction was considered
newsworthy in contemporary press sources. In order to do this it is necessary
to consider the articles cited above in the historical context of emotional norms
and ideas of masculinity in post-war Italy. Tom Lutz has argued that while
crying is a universal amongst humans, as with all emotional displays, the
meaning assigned to tears changes across time and space. 162 Crying therefore
needs to be contextualized in order to be understood. In particular the age and
sex of the person crying are crucial to understanding the meanings assigned to
their tears. The types of emotional performance expected from men and women
in the given context needs to be examined. In the first half of the twentieth
century, rational emotional control was fostered in Western culture,
particularly in men.163 In an Italian context Mussolini actively looked to rid
Italians of what he deemed the defect of sentimentalism. In the lead up to the
Second World War Italian soldiers were instructed to keep their emotions in
check. The model of masculinity that Fascism looked to foster was of a virile,
intense, and emotionally disciplined individual who was willing to use violence
162
163
Tom Lutz, Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears, W.W. Norton, London, 1999, p.
25
Ibid., p. 151-153
140
when necessary and ready to die for his country.164 Ruth Ben Ghiat has argued
that following the humiliation of military surrender and foreign occupation in
the mid-1940s there was a crisis of Italian masculinity. The male identities of a
generation that had been raised under Fascism needed to be redefined in the
context of a new democratic republic.165
In this context, following twenty years of Fascist rule, Italy’s post-war
political leaders had to formulate a new way to communicate to the mass public
which distanced themselves from the methods of Mussolini’s regime. The
Fascist rhetoric of the superman was rejected and instead political leaders
could show signs of physical weakness and tiredness as well as use calm and
understanding tones to communicate their political message. 166 De Gasperi was
depicted in party sources and politically sympathetic publications as a modest,
pious, patient and meditative individual.167 The fact that he hailed from
Trentino, formerly part of Austria, meant that De Gasperi was often viewed as
having a more ‘northern European’ temperament: he was depicted as being
stoic, direct, serious, and economical with his words. Furthermore, the DC
leader was presented in party sources as a pious family man: his wife was
depicted as a woman of great strength and his daughter Lucia was a nun.168
Italian emotional norms and notions of masculinity prevalent in the
post-war period arguably help to explain the significance that sections of the
Italian press placed on De Gasperi’s apparent tears of empathy during his first
164
165
166
167
168
Ben Ghiat, p. 342
Ibid., p. 339
Marzia Marsili, ‘De Gasperi and Togliatti: political leadership and personality cults in postwar Italy’, Modern Italy, vol. 3 (1998), no. 2, pp. 249-250
For the portrayal of De Gasperi in PCI sources see Goretti, ‘Truman’s Bombs’, pp. 159-177.
Marsili, pp. 250-253
141
visit to Matera. It was acceptable, perhaps even welcomed, that a post-war
Italian Prime Minister should display public emotion - albeit discreetely. As
noted above, however, De Gasperi was depicted in partisan sources as having a
stoic character often attributed to the fact that he was a montanaro. The claim
that he was moved to cry in public during his visit to Matera, therefore, suggests
that this event was viewed as having added significance. Furthermore, the press
coverage examined above implies that De Gasperi’s tears were motivated by
empathy for the living conditions of fellow Italian citizens and the state’s
inability to tackle the ‘problem’ of Matera’s Sassi. In the context of ideas of
Italian nationalism, therefore, the Prime Minister’s tears were used to show
readers that he was a ‘good’ patriot.
De Gasperi’s visit to Matera on 23 July 1950 had a concrete effect on the
city’s history. On his return to Rome the DC leader called for a parliamentary
committee to draft special legislation for Matera’s cave homes to be established.
Although, as seen above, the mass media and the PCI had placed pressure on the
Christian Democrat government to tackle Matera’s housing problems, the
Servizio Informazioni’s official report on De Gasperi’s visit makes direct
reference to the fact that ‘il Presidente del Consiglio è stato evidentemente
impressionato dal problema dei “sassi di Matera”.’169 Moreover, the report
notes that ‘l’on. De Gasperi si è fatto interprete, quindi, della necessità ed
urgenza di una soluzione integrale per sanare una situazione che si presenta
assai complessa nei suoi vari aspetti igienici, sociali e morali.’170 The Italian
cabinet duly agreed that a committee should be established to draw up special
169
170
ACS, PCM 48-50, Matera, Risanamento dei Rioni dei Sassi: I.6.I, no. 77794. Presidenza del
consiglio dei ministri. Servizio Informazioni – Div. Comunitari e Rassegne. 28 July 1950.
Ibid.
142
legislation for Matera’s troglodyte homes. Notably, however, the Servizio
Informazioni’s communiqué appears to have been drafted to provide a
summary of De Gasperi’s visit to Matera for press outlets. The exact same text
was cited in La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno just days after the Italian Prime
Minister’s visit.171 This suggests that the Christian Democrats were keen to
convey the message that their party leader was not only moved during his visit
to the Sassi, but he was willing to act on these apparent feelings and thus make
a contribution to restoring a sense of national dignity in a country still coming
to terms with its apparent crisis of national identity in the aftermath of the
Second World War.
Conclusion
Expressions of national shame produced in the context of post-war Matera
appear to have emerged in April 1948 following Palmiro Togliatti’s pre-election
speech in the city. The idea gained momentum in 1950 following Alcide De
Gasperi’s visit to Matera and the announcement that the Italian government
planned special legislation for the Sassi. The concept of Matera as a national
shame reached its height in the early 1950s when political and media calls for
government intervention increased. References to Matera as a national shame,
however, largely disappeared from political and media sources when the Italian
parliament and senate passed the legge n.619: Rinsanamento dei rioni dei Sassi
nell’abitato del comune di Matera on 17 May 1952. This legislation instigated a
large-scale rehousing programme for the city’s estimated 15,000 cave dwellers.
In the post-war context of the late 1940s and early 1950s, it is clear that the
171
See ‘La pace è la suprema aspirazione del Governo e del popolo italiani’, La Gazzetta del
Mezzogiorno, 29 July 1950, p. 1.
143
different journalists, politicians and public officials cited above had different
notions of what constituted Italian national identity. Although the terminology
used to express patriotic shame was often strikingly similar, these narratives
were at the same time a means through which political identities were formed
in the context of the Cold War. Ideas of national shame and pride became part of
the wider political battleground in which opposing sides of the ideological
divide attempted to appropriate the national ‘we’ and accuse each other of
being bad patriots. The moral sensibilities of distinct catholic and communist
emotional communities also clearly shaped the different expressions of national
shame examined above. Notions of progress, sexual morality, and the sanctity of
the family impacted the reasons why and the ways in which national shame was
expressed. There were, however, additional historical factors in the immediate
post-war period which arguably impacted these emotional norms and produced
some shared concerns between catholic and communist emotional
communities: the trauma and destruction of the Second World War, the
resultant Europe-wide housing crisis, the legacy of Fascism, and the increased
emphasis on the sanctity of the family.
Furthermore, the patriotic expressions generated in the context of postwar Matera show that there were different and competing notions of what
constituted the nation. It is clear, therefore, that broad generalizations about the
feelings of all Italians in this context should be avoided. Instead historians need
to examine individual expressions of national shame at a micro-level as well as
the parameters of the specific emotional communities which shaped these
narratives. This chapter has attempted to uncover the interface between the
144
competing national identities and the different emotional communities that
were generated by and influenced expressions of national shame in the context
of post-war Matera. These patriotic narratives created the very thing to which
they claimed to belong - the Italian nation – as well as a set of national ideals
which the Sassi were judged to have affronted.
The narratives of patriotic shame generated in the context of post-war
Matera had a direct impact on the city’s social and urban development. This was
exemplified in De Gasperi’s decision to create a commission to draw up draft
legislation for Matera following his first visit to the city in April 1950. The
government presented a provisional law to parliament on 30 May 1951 which
outlined a programme for the construction of 2,000 new homes for the
residents of the Sassi over a four-year period. The project was given an initial
budget of 5.2 billion lire which would be used to construct apartments and
purpose-built agricultural villages in Matera’s hinterland. Notions of national
shame appear to have influenced the subsequent parliamentary and senate
commissions which debated the DC government’s draft legislation for Matera in
spring 1952. During the parliamentary-commission discussions Giulio Spallone,
the PCI deputy for Acquila, noted that despite reservations over a number of the
draft law’s articles, the Communist Party would vote in favour of the
legislation.172 This decision, Spallone explained, was taken ‘perchè ci interessa il
172
The communist delegates that took part in the parliamentary commission to discuss the
draft law for Matera were opposed to the creation of rural villages for the Sassi’s estimated
16,000 inhabitants. Moreover, they queried the budget of four billion lire that the
government draft law had allocated for the rehousing programme. In addition, the PCI and
the PSI were against the draft law’s provision to repair and reuse a number of homes located
in the Sassi. For example Michele Bianco, a PCI deputy for Matera, argued that the Christian
Democrat government’s draft law planned to ‘conservare i “Sassi” così come sono oggi,
utilizzando il patrimonio utilizzabile.’ Bianco was against this approach because in his
opinion the Sassi were ‘una cosa che dovrebbe sparire!’ Therefore he contended that
145
problema dei “Sassi di Matera”, perchè vogliamo cancellare questa vergogna che
affligge da secoli l’Italia meridionale.’173 The Socialist senator Giacomo Mancini
expressed similar sentiments during the discussion of the special law in Italy’s
second chamber. He argued that none of the Sassi’s cave homes should be
retained because they were an affront to southern Italy’s sense of pride: ‘avrei
desiderato che nel disegno di legge in esame non fosse stata prospettata la
possibilità di recuperare un certo numero di caverne, per l’onore e la dignità del
Mezzogiorno.’174 But ultimately Mancini voted in favour of the special law for
the Sassi because in his opinion ‘le caverne rappresentano il disdoro del
Mezzogiorno e a tale disdoro si deve porre finalmente termine.’175 The
interventions made during the parliamentary commission and senate debates
cited above suggest that ideas of national shame directly influenced the decision
to pass the special law for the Sassi. Arguably no party wanted to oppose the
proposed special legislation for fear of being seen as unpatriotic despite a
number of reservations about it provisions. The first special law marked a
defining moment in Matera’s history and transformed the city’s urban and
social fabric forever. The next chapter will examine the implementation of the
first special law in detail.
173
174
175
‘bisognerebbe, insomma, provvedere ad eliminare completamente queste zone di abitazione,
e l’eliminazione di queste zone andrebbe fatta in modo integrale.’ See Camera dei Deputati,
Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXIX, 6 February 1952, p.
574. Narratives of national shame appear to have directly influenced this position. In his
own draft law for Matera Bianco had called on Italian deputies to approve the legislation ‘per
ragioni di umanità e di dignità nazionale’ as the Sassi were ‘un marchio di infamia per la
civiltà e dignità del nostro Paese.’ See Bianco, pp. 1-4.
Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXIX,
21 March 1952, p. 619
Senato della Repubblica, Risanamento dei “Sassi” di Matera. Discussione del disegno di legge
n. 2262, VII commissione, 8 May 1952. Reproduced in Mario Cresci (ed.), Matera: immagini e
documenti, Edizioni Meta, Matera, 1975, p. 347.
Ibid., p. 349
146
Chapter 3: The first special law for the Sassi
Dopo secoli di attesa, il ricordo si perde nella storia dei tempi, dopo che
intere generazioni si sono succedute nell’ansia di vedere risolto il
problema dei ‘Sassi’ che racchiudono, imprigionando, nella loro aspra e
paurosa struttura, gli alloggi di migliaia nostri lavoratori, ecco una
luminosa e radiosa volontà di Governo democratico e Cristiano,
cancellare quello che indubbiamente costituiva una vergogna per una
Nazione civile.1
The above quote comes from a document that Matera’s provincial
administration produced to announce draft legislation for the Sassi. The
subsequent enactment of the first special law on 17 May 1952 marked a turning
point in the city’s history. No previous legislation had implemented a
comprehensive plan to rehouse Matera’s troglodyte population. The so-called
Legge Colombo would result in the transformation of Matera’s urban and social
fabric. Following the success of Carlo Levi’s Cristo si è fermato a Eboli and the
subsequent press and political interest in the Sassi, Matera had attracted the
attention of Italy’s public sphere. The Sassi’s cave dwellings had been dubbed a
national shame and were commonly presented as a symbol of Italy’s southern
question in political and media circles. Resolving Matera’s widely-publicized
housing problems thus became an issue of national importance for the Christian
Democrat government. At the same time the implementation of the first special
law provided the ruling party with an opportunity to showcase its twin reform
programme for southern Italy. Matera’s cave dwellers would be rehoused in
purpose-built accommodation designed by the leading lights of Italian post-war
architecture and town planning. These new housing projects would aim to meet
the perceived social, cultural and employment needs of their new inhabitants
1
See the report dated 18 April 1951 in ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 661,
sottofascicolo A.
147
and dovetail with land reform legislation passed in 1950. Agricultural workers
would be moved closer to the land that they worked, day labourers would be
transformed into small landowners, and artisans would be rehoused in
purpose-built urban neighbourhoods. The special law for the Sassi, therefore,
was an attempt to deliver on the promises that Alcide De Gasperi had made
during his visit to Matera in July 1950. Narratives of national shame were
combined with state paternalism and ultimately political opportunism in what
was a significant experiment in post-war urban planning.
That experiment involved a major building and rehousing programme
which transformed Matera’s urban and social topography. The first special law
legislated for the transfer of residents deemed to be living in uninhabitable
housing to new accommodation and ultimately resulted in the gradual
abandonment of Matera’s distinctive cave homes. This process was projected to
take four years, but had not been fully completed over twenty years later. The
original rehousing plans proposed the construction of five rural villages for selfsufficient small landowners, tenant farmers and artisans; two semi-rural
suburbs for fixed-wage and day labourers; three urban quarters for artisans and
city-based workers; and the renovation of those cave homes deemed fit for
habitation. These proposals, however, would be modified when the provisions
of the first special law were translated into concrete building projects. Notably
the estimated 15,000 Sassi residents whose lives the first special law directly
impacted were not consulted throughout the risanamento process. Instead the
rehousing programme was applied from above. The lack of local representation
148
would result in a number of social and economic problems during the special
law’s implementation.
The existing secondary literature on post-war Matera tends to view the
risanamento programme as a deliberate manipulation of housing data in order
to empty the Sassi rather than renovate the existing cave homes. This policy, it
is argued, was carried out in order to gain social and political control over a
potentially revolutionary urban population. Moreover, the first special law for
Matera is viewed as being emblematic of a wider government strategy which
aimed to transform small landowners, tenant farmers, and landless agricultural
workers into cheap labour for northern Italian industry. Post-war land reform
legislation is judged to have been a deliberate attempt to move agricultural
workers from farming into construction and the factory. There has been,
however, a surprising neglect of primary source documents pertaining to the
risanamento programme’s implementation in much of the secondary material.
The construction work undertaken at Matera following the implementation of
the special law needs to be viewed in the context of broader historical processes
at a national and international level. Italy faced a major housing crisis in the
wake of the Second World War and implemented a major rebuilding
programme. Furthermore the country then witnessed the rapid expansion of
urban centres due to internal migration and rural exodus in the 1960s. Hitherto
there has been a tendency to study post-war Matera at a micro-level without
taking wider historical changes in post-war Italy and Europe into consideration.
A number of existing secondary sources have cast long shadows over
subsequent research and arguably stifled analysis of the risanamento
149
programme.2 This chapter will endeavour to be a corrective. It will draw on
previously neglected archival material to reassess the first special law and
critique the arguments put forward in the existing literature on post-war
Matera. As a result at times this part of the thesis will be empirical in its aims
and descriptive in its presentation of material, but no less historical for that. It
will look to trace the links between the caso Levi, narratives of national shame
and the southern question, and the political decisions which shaped the special
law’s implementation during the course of the 1950s. It will also examine the
many problems that the risanamento programme encountered.
This chapter is divided into four separate sections which explore the first
special law’s drafting and subsequent application. The first section examines
the residential-village model proposed in a report on Matera produced in 1950.
The concept of transferring the Sassi’s rural workers closer to the land that they
worked would dominate the risanamento programme and therefore needs to be
studied in detail. The second part focuses on the comprehensive study of the
Sassi carried out in the early 1950s by an interdisciplinary research team. This
project’s findings produced a large amount of housing data on the Sassi which
supplemented the regional office of public works’ findings. Moreover, it brought
the potential links between the Sassi’s urban layout and the local community’s
social bonds to the attention of the architects and urban planners that worked
on the risanamento programme. Thirdly this chapter analyses the terms of the
special law. It looks at the parliamentary debates which shaped the legislation,
the provisions of the law itself, and local reaction to the proposed risanamento
2
See for example Restucci and Tafuri, Raguso, Matera dai Sassi ai borghi and Toxey, Materan
Contradictions. This point is developed in detail in section 3.4 below.
150
programme. The fourth section examines the special law’s implementation. It
outlines the teething problems that the first special law experienced and the
different housing projects that were built. Finally this section re-evaluates the
first special law through a critique of the existing secondary literature on the
subject.
3.1 The residential village model
The concept of rehousing the Sassi’s agricultural workers in purpose-built rural
villages was central to the official intervention programme undertaken at
Matera. This urban-planning model stemmed from a European Cooperation
Administration (ECA) financed report published in January 1950 by the Basento
Valley land-reclamation syndicate. The study, entitled Il problema dei Sassi di
Matera, was compiled by the rural economist Nallo Mazzocchi Alemanni in
collaboration with the ECA official Enzo Calia.3 This report is significant in the
context of Matera’s post-war urban development as the concepts that it put
forward directly influenced the first special law for the Sassi and the
subsequent Piano Regionale Generale for Matera. The ECA report situated the
caso Matera in the wider context of restructuring agriculture at a regional level.
It argued that the stagnation of southern Italian agriculture was due to the fact
that rural workers lived in urban centres and had to travel long distances on a
3
Nallo Mazzocchi Alemanni (1889-1967) graduated in agricultural economics. As part of his
studies he carried out research in Italy’s then colonial territories in Somalia and Eritrea. He
subsequently worked for the Italian Colonial Ministry and was part of the Commissione per lo
studio agrologico della Tripolitania in 1913-1914 and travelled extensively in Africa. From
1920-1923 he was the director of the Istituto agricolo coloniale italiano di Firenze and then
in the 1930s worked as the inspector general of the Opera nazionale comabattenti (a
veterans association which employed demobilized soldiers in public works programmes).
Mazzocchi Alemanni worked as the technical director of the bonifica intergrale scheme in the
Pontine Marshes in the 1930s and then in the 1940s oversaw a project to settle the Sicilian
great estates. For further biographical information see: ARCHIVIO NALLO MAZZOCCHI
ALEMANNI (1889-1967), http://www.animi.it/archivio_mazzocchi-alemanni.htm, (accessed
21/06/2013).
151
daily basis to reach the land that they farmed. Therefore, it was argued, time
and energy that could have been used working the land was wasted. 4 The report
contended that the long distances between farmland and urban centres meant
that the possibility of including other family members (women, children and the
elderly) in agricultural work was greatly reduced. For Mazzocchi Alemanni and
Calia these factors resulted in reduced levels of agricultural productivity in
southern Italy. Their report presented Matera as a typical example of this
economic model.5
A three-pronged solution for resolving the Sassi’s housing problems was
proposed. The details of this model need to be briefly summarized as they
would influence subsequent rehousing plans implemented at Matera. First, the
report put forward the construction of three agricultural villages located 10-12
kilometres outside of Matera at Timmari-Picciano-Rifeccia, Venusio, and Torre
Spagnola. They would rehouse 1,460 small farmers and artisans. 6 These
locations were chosen because, according to the report, they reflected where
the majority of Matera’s small landowning farmers and landless workers
owned, rented or worked agricultural land. The urban planning proposals
4
5
6
Writing in 1950 about the need to populate the southern great estates, Mazzocchi Alemanni
estimated that southern agricultural workers spent 400-500 hours per annum travelling to
and from their farmland. As a result he claimed that 200 million hours of potential working
hours were being lost each year. See Nallo Mazzocchi Alemanni, ‘Insediamento umano nei
territori latifondistici’, in Eugenio Zagari (ed.), Mezzogiorno e agricoltura, Giuffrè Editore,
Varese, 1977, pp. 137-150.
‘Il caso di Matera offre un tipico esempio della necessità di risolvere il problema di quel
deteriore accentramento contadino.’ The details of Mazzocchi Alemanni and Calia’s report on
the Sassi are reproduced in the former’s article ‘Il problema dei “Sassi” di Matera avviato
verso una definitiva soluzione’, Agricoltura italiana, (1951), no. 7, pp. 171-177.
The report contends that ‘una razionale e realistica soluzione del problema dei Sassi deve
basarsi su di una visione organica del problema, che è contemporaneamente urbano e rurale,
igienico e economico, intimamente connesso con quello della trasformazione agraria di tutto
il territorio materano. E poiché ha fondamento della trasformazione fondiaria della regione è
ormai riconosciuto che sta la costituzione di “Borghi residenziali” come lo strumento più
adatto a determinare l’indespensabile popolamento stabile delle campagne.’ This quote is
reproduced in Restucci and Tafuri, p. 40.
152
suggested for resolving the Sassi’s housing problems, therefore, were meant to
improve the town’s agricultural economy. Moreover, all three agricultural zones
were connected to Matera via pre-existing roads. Thus, in theory, the
agricultural workers transferred to the new villages would have more time to
concentrate on farming and additional family members could also carry out
farm work.7 These villages would also provide the essential services needed to
create a self-sufficient urban centre, such as schools, medical facilities, food
supplies and a church, which would convince rural workers that the new
housing projects were viable.8 Second, the report outlined the construction of
two suburban residential quarters at Piccianello and Cappuccini to rehouse the
estimated 685 Sassi artisans and braccianti whose employment was directly
linked to Matera’s historic urban centre. These two sites were selected because
of a pre-existing bus service to the town centre. This would mean that new
residents would not be isolated from their workplace. Finally, Mazzocchi
Alemanni and Calia proposed the renovation of the estimated 501 cave homes
judged to have met the required hygienic and structural standards and the
permanent closure of the 1,641 homes that the report deemed to be
uninhabitable.9 Renovations would, it was recommended, be carried out by
homeowners themselves with financial incentives from the state. The report,
however, aimed to transcend the agricultural and housing context of Matera. It
hoped that the rehousing model proposed for the Sassi could be part of ‘la
soluzione del più generale problema di un logico e razionale insediamento
7
8
9
The 1,460 families to be rehoused in rural villages would be divided accordingly: TimmariPicciano-Rifeccia (350 small farmers, 150 landless workers, 50 artisans: 550 families in
total); Borgo Venusio (200 small farmers, 150 landless workers, 60 artisans: 410 families in
total); and Borgo Torre Spagnola (300 small farmers, 150 braccianti, and 160 artisans).
Mazzocchi Alemanni, ‘Insediamento umano’, p. 143
Mazzocchi Alemanni, ‘Il problema dei “Sassi”’, pp. 171-177
153
umano per entro i depressi territori latifondistici.’10 The use of Matera as the
testing ground for innovative and experimental urban planning designs and
theories, which it was hoped could be implemented in other parts of rural Italy,
is a recurring feature in the various post-war studies of the city. Matera’s
perceived national importance seemed to provide urban planners and
architects with an opportunity to test their ideas on instigating social and
economic development through architecture and town planning strategies.
The borghi rurali model was the most innovative aspect of Mazzocchi
Alemanni and Calia’s report in terms of urban planning. Anne Toxey has argued
that the study’s plans to rehouse the majority of Sassi residents in rural villages
were loosely based on the bonifica integrale model employed under Fascism,
most notably in the drainage and repopulation of the Pontine Marshes in the
1930s.11 Mazzocchi Alemanni had worked on this vast project in his role as the
inspector general of the Opera Nazionale Combattenti. His urban-planning
model for Matera, however, contrasted with the Agro Pontino project in one
crucial aspect.12 Instead of proposing separate farmhouses, service villages
(which provided warehouses, grain silos, administrative offices, a church and a
police station) and the civic and administrative centres constructed under
10
11
12
Ibid., p. 176
This project saw a vast malarial plain drained and farms created for assignees moved from
the Emilia-Romagna and Veneto regions. The implication of Toxey’s argument is that postwar government intervention at Matera was residually Fascist in tone. This point is not
developed any further, however, and feels somewhat forced. See Toxey, Materan
Contradictions, p. 89.
Mazzocchi Alemanni was not the first person to suggest rehousing Matera’s cave dwellers in
rural accommodation. Following his visit to the city in 1902 Giuseppe Zanardelli had
recommended relocating the Sassi’s residents to the countryside where they worked.
Moreover, Alfredo Angeloni’s 1927 public works programme, ‘Per la più grande Matera’, and
Vincenzo Corazza’s 1941 report on Matera’s cave homes had both outlined plans for
rehousing the Sassi’s agricultural workers in rural housing. However, these three unrealized
initiatives had planned to build individual farmhouses rather than the rural villages that
Mazzocchi Alemanni and Calia proposed. See Pontrandolfi, pp. 17-31.
154
Fascism in the 1930s, which were later adopted by the Puglia-Lucania-Molise
land reform board, the plans for Matera put forward the concept of residential
villages. Mazzocchi Alemanni argued that town planning needed to take local
conditions into consideration. The model used in the Pontine Marshes project, it
was claimed, would not be suitable for southern Italy as rural workers were
used to living together in urban centres. Residential villages were proposed
instead with the belief that they would foster social bonds and increase
agricultural productivity.13
There were, however, a number of problems with Mazzocchi Alemanni
and Calia’s report which would be carried into the first special law for the Sassi
and emerge when subsequent studies of Matera had been carried out. First the
report had failed to examine the complex and idiosyncratic character of land
ownership and tenancy at Matera in detail. Land holdings tended to be small in
size and fragmented across the complex patchwork of farmland close to the
provincial capital. Many small proprietors and tenant farmers owned or rented
property in different zones close to the provincial capital. Consequently a lot of
agricultural workers needed to travel between the various plots of land that
they farmed. In addition, not all of the small farms and plots of land near Matera
were owned or rented by families living in the Sassi. Property was also farmed
by agricultural workers from nearby villages and towns. This point would
become clear following more detailed studies of land holdings at Matera carried
13
Mazzocchi Alemanni gives a detailed explanation for his preference of the residential village
model instead of separate farmhouses and service villages in Mazzocchi Alemanni,
‘Insediamento umano’, pp. 137-150.
155
out in the early 1950s.14 As a result the locations chosen for the proposed rural
villages did not always correspond to areas that Sassi residents farmed.
Mazzocchi Alemanni and Calia’s report, in addition, failed to provide a
detailed plan for the transformation of agricultural land into the farms and
supplemental plots needed to create self-sufficient families for the proposed
rural villages.15 Landless workers would have no motivation to move to isolated
towns unless they received land to farm or were assured that there would be
consistent employment as fixed-wage labourers. A subsequent study of local
agriculture carried out in the mid-1950s revealed that seventy-seven per cent of
Matera’s 38,000 hectares of arable land was divided between small landowners,
tenant farmers, and sharecroppers in modestly-sized farms and rented
properties. Thus it was unclear where the additional land needed to create
larger self-sufficient farms and provide land for casual day labourers would be
found.16 These points were not addressed in the ECA report despite the fact that
the Christian Democrat government was drawing up land reform legislation in
1950.
How can these apparent oversights be explained? A closer examination
of the data that Mazzocchi Alemanni and Calia provided on the Sassi’s housing
14
15
16
A report on Matera’s agricultural economy produced in November 1952 for the land reform
board suggests that land holdings were divided between numerous small-holding and tenant
families, many of whom were from neighbouring towns such as Altamura. See ASM,
Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 662, sottofascicolo B.
Pontrandolfi, pp. 59-62
Fedele Aiello’s study of land holdings at Matera carried out in the mid-1950s found that
seventy-seven per cent of the city’s 38,000 hectares of available agricultural land was
divided between small landowners (16,900 hectares), tenant farmers (10,500 hectares) and
sharecroppers (1,800 hectares). Agriculture at Matera appeared to correspond to the
latifondo contadino model theorized by Manlio Rossi-Doria in which large land holdings had
been divided into small units. See Fedele Aiello, ‘Dai Sassi alle borgate’, Nord-Sud, (1955), no.
5, pp. 62-88; and Manlio Rossi-Doria, Riforma agraria e azione meridionalista, Edizioni
Agricole, Bologna, 1948, pp 1-51.
156
conditions reveals that these statistics were taken directly from Luca Crispino’s
1938 report on Matera.17 This suggests that the ECA-sponsored study was
based on pre-existing data rather than a close examination of the city’s social
and economic conditions during the period 1949-1950. A report produced by
the head of the local carabinieri in April 1950 provides alternative statistics on
Matera’s demographics and employment which appears to reinforce this point.
The report suggests that Matera’s population had increased between 1938,
when Crispino’s report was carried out, and 1950 when Mazzocchi Alemanni
and Calia produced their study.18 Thus, Mazzocchi Alemanni appears to have
applied his model for developing southern agriculture onto Matera without
carrying out a detailed study of local economic and social factors. Furthermore,
there is no evidence to suggest that Mazzocchi Alemanni and Calia consulted
Sassi residents in the drafting of their report. This offers a supplemental
explanation for their failure to understand the complex nature of land holdings
at Matera. The implication from Mazzocchi Alemanni and Calia’s report is that
local residents did not have the required understanding of agricultural
economics and were incapable of contributing to the restructuring of the local
economy. Rather this process would need to be carried out from above by
experts. This paternalistic attitude towards local residents would characterize
the majority of reports that were produced on the Sassi in the post-war period
as well as the risanamento programme.
17
18
Crispino, pp. 3-32.
See Giovanni Stingone’s report entitled Matera – Risanamento dei rioni dei “Sassi”. Servizio
informazione speciale dated 17 April 1950. ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo
661, sottofascicolo A.
157
Notably in 1950 Mazzocchi Alemanni had presented a paper at the
Italian economic, demographic, and statistical society’s conference. In this study
he argued that relocating agricultural workers to borghi rurali situated closer to
the land that they farmed was essential for increasing agricultural productivity
in southern Italy. The report on Matera arguably provided an opportunity to
map out these theoretical ideas in the context of what, in the early 1950s, was
considered the archetypal southern Italian rural city.19 Writing in 1951 about
the first special law for Matera, Mazzocchi Alemanni argued that ‘sarà quanto
mai fecondo per la soluzione del più generale problema di un logico e razionale
insediamento umano per entro i depressi territori latifondistici.’20 As a result a
generic model for increasing agricultural productivity in southern Italy was
applied to a distinctive local case which, through media and political attention,
had become emblematic of a putative concept of southern Italian agriculture.
This illustrates the impact that notions of Matera as a symbol of the southern
question had on the city’s post-war history. The city was seen as a laboratory
for resolving the social and economic problems of the entire Mezzogiorno.
Despite their report’s limitations, the urban-planning model that Mazzocchi
Alemanni and Calia put forward for rehousing the Sassi’s agricultural workers
in borghi rurali would shape the provisions of the first special law for Matera.
The study’s oversights, however, would prove to be problematic when the
special law was implemented in the mid-1950s as will be examined below in
detail.
19
20
See Mazzocchi Alemanni, ‘Insediamento umano’, pp. 137-150.
Mazzocchi Alemanni, ‘Il problema dei “Sassi”’, p. 176
158
3.2 The Study Commission
In 1951 the Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica (INU) commissioned a
comprehensive study of the Sassi. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration-Comitato Amministrativo Soccorso ai Senzatetto (UNRRACASAS) financed the project.21 Over the next two years the Commissione di
Studio della città e dell’agro di Matera examined the economic, geographic and
demographic conditions as well as the historical development of Matera’s cave
dwellings. The study was incorporated into a wider UNRRA-CASAS project to
build the purpose-built village La Martella in Matera’s agricultural hinterland.
This scheme was projected to rehouse 200 families from the Sassi closer to the
land that they worked. The Study Commission’s findings served as a blueprint
for the urban planners and architects that designed La Martella’s urban layout
and house design.22 Friedrich G. Friedmann, a lecturer in Philosophy at the
University of Arkansas, led the project.23 He was joined by a team of seventeen
researchers and consultants who contributed to the study.24 A vast amount of
21
22
23
24
For a history of UNRRA-CASAS activities in post-war Italy see Talamona, pp. 175-204.
La Martella’s troubled history and development are examined in detail in the next chapter.
Friedrich G. Friedmann studied Literature and Philosophy in Rome in the 1930s before
fleeing to London and later North America in 1940 to escape racial persecution. He returned
to Italy in 1950 having been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study the philosophy of
Italy’s peasantry and carried out field work in Basilicata and Calabria. At the end of 1950
Friedmann received additional funding from the Rockefeller Foundation which allowed him
to prolong his research into southern Italy’s rural poor for another nine months. Following
this period of study he published the article ‘The World of “La Miseria”’ in which he
examines the worldview of southern Italy’s rural culture which drew heavily on Carlo Levi’s
portrayal of the peasantry in Cristo. For a full biography of Friedmann’s early life see
Friedmann, Miseria e dignità, pp. 13-33; and Friedrich G. Friedmann, ‘The Origins of “La
Miseria”’, in David A. Rees (ed.), The Ethnographic Moment: correspondence of Robert Redfield
and F.G. Friedmann, Transaction Publishers, New Jersey, 2006, pp. 1-9.
In addition to Friedmann, the Commissione’s research team consisted of Giuseppe Isnardi:
Geography; Francesco Nitti: Medieval and Modern History; Federico Gorio and Ludovico
Quaroni: town planning; Rocco Mazzarone: demographics and hygiene conditions; Lidia De
Rita: Psychology; Giuseppe Orlando: Economics; Gilberto Marselli: Economics and Rural
Sociology; Alberto Giordano: Criminology; Tullio Tentori: Cultural Anthropology; Eleonora
Bracco: Prehistory and Paleonthology. Moreover, Rigo Innocenti, Riccardo Musatti,
159
data on the Sassi was gathered which UNRRA-CASAS planned to publish in full,
however, only a preliminary report and three official volumes were ever
officially issued.25
Friedmann and his team hoped that their work could contribute to
improving the living conditions of Sassi residents while concurrently
safeguarding local rural culture.26 It was argued that a development programme
from above risked destroying the community’s pre-existing cultural and social
bonds.27 Instead the Study Commission directly consulted Sassi residents
during its field work. The local population was surveyed in an attempt to
understand the economic and psychological needs of the families that would be
transferred to La Martella. Moreover, Friedmann and his team contended that
25
26
27
Venerando Correnti, Tommaso Ventura and Giovanni Vitrani worked as consultants on the
project and Giovanni Martoglio acted as the group’s secretary.
See Musatti, Friedmann and Isnardi; Francesco Nitti, Una città del Sud, vol. II, UNRRA-Casas
Prima Giunta, Rome, 1956; and Tullio Tentori, Il sistema di vita della comunità materana.
Riassunto di un’inchiesta etnologica, UNRRA-Casas Prima Giunta, Rome, 1956. Albino Sacco,
who worked as an assistant for the Study Commission, claims that the DC dominated
management of UNRRA-CASAS decided not to publish the remaining six studies because the
researchers involved were linked to Adriano Olivetti’s Comunità movement. Instead, Sacco
contends, the material was transferred to Bari and subsequently mislaid. See Bilò and Vadini,
pp. 50-51.
Speaking in 1985 about the Study Commission’s aims Friedmann argued that ‘il nostro
problema principale era come costruire un insediamento nuovo in modo tale da migliorare
le condizioni di vita degli abitanti, e in specie le condizioni igieniche, senza distruggere
quelle forme di cultura che erano diffuse da secoli nei Sassi.’ See Friedmann, Miseria e
dignità, p. 70. The philosophy behind the Study Commission’s research appears to have
drawn directly from Friedmann’s work on southern rural culture. He argued that any
development programme for southern Italy needed to protect the positive aspects of
southern peasant culture. See Friedrich G. Friedmann, ‘The World of “La Miseria”’, Partisan
Review, (1953), no. 20, pp. 218-231. The article was later translated into Italian and
published as Friedrich G. Friedmann, ‘Osservazioni sul mondo contadino dell’Italia
meridionale’, Quaderni di Sociologia, (1957), no. 3, pp. 148-161.
While acknowledging the need for an official reform programme for the Mezzogiorno,
Riccardo Musatti argued that peasant culture needed to be preserved in this process: ‘Ora di
fronte a una società tradizionalmente costretta a una condizione subalterna … il potere
politico non può ritardare più oltre l’intervento rinnovatore. Ma nel grande passo dall’inerzia
all’azione il rischio mortale è quello di tutto travolgere: di sgetolare sotto un impulso
materiale e ideologico senza precedenti strutture preformate da secoli e giungere, così,
piuttosto che alla costruzione di altri scompensi, di nuove e crude dissonanze: di portare alla
campagna piuttosto che quanto la “città” rappresenta di organizzazione, squilibrio, caotico
cozzo d’interessi in lotta.’ See Riccardo Musatti, ‘Monti e vicende dello studio’, Commissione
per lo studio della città e dell'agro di Matera: Saggi introduttivi, vol. I, UNRRA CASAS, Prima
Giunta, Rome, 1956, p. 6.
160
local residents should be allowed to choose the new community’s political,
social and economic structures rather than these elements being imposed from
above.28 The Study Commission’s work was the only instance in which Sassi
residents were directly consulted about their transfer to new housing. The
risanamento programme, in contrast, would be carried out without the input of
the 15,000 that it directly impacted. There was, however, a paternalistic
undertone to the work that Friedmann and his team carried out. The Study
Commission contended that not only could La Martella’s architectural and
urban planning design preserve the pre-existing social ties they had located in
the Sassi, but it could actually improve them.29
INU and UNRRA-CASAS published the Commissione’s preliminary
findings in 1953. The report provided data on the Sassi’s housing conditions
and demographics as well as an employment profile of residents. According to
Friedmann and his team there were 15,052 people living in the Sassi in 1951. Of
the 6,276 people in employment 3,254 worked in agriculture, 2,417 in industry,
171 in commercial activities, and 434 in services. The report concluded that
there were a total of 3,329 dwellings in the Sassi. A total of 158 cave homes
were deemed inhabitable, 1,676 in need of redevelopment work, 509 dwellings
could be converted into storerooms or stables, and 986 homes were judged to
28
29
This point is made explicitly by Friedmann in his description of his research team’s primary
aims: ‘quale tipo di organizzazione potrebbero scegliere le nuove comunità, quale forma e
direzione potrebbero assumere le loro attività culturali, sociali, politiche, non stava a noi
naturalmente di decidere; a questi interrogativi dovevano rispondere i membri di queste
comunità.’ See Federico G. Friedmann, ‘Un Incontro: Matera’, in Musatti, Friedmann and
Isnardi, p. 13.
Writing about La Martella Friedmann contended that ‘in contrasto drammatico con il
carattere chiuso e difensivo dei villaggi e delle città tradizionali, queste case suggerivano
l’idea del volontario associarsi, dell’aprirsi al mondo circostante.’ See Friedmann, ‘Un
Incontro’, p. 14.
161
be uninhabitable.30 Therefore, the Study Commission contended that, in terms
of hygienic and infrastructural considerations, less than half of the Sassi’s
homes would need to be abandoned permanently. Although Matera: uno studio
claimed that the Commissione’s findings informed the first special law’s
provisions and its subsequent implementation, in fact the risanamento
programme drew on supplemental housing data that Matera’s Office of Public
Works produced. The decision to apparently overlook the housing statistics that
Friedmann and his team had generated would become a major topic of debate
in secondary sources that examined the first special law’s implementation. 31
Another salient aspect of the Study Commission’s findings was
psychologist Lidia De Rita’s research into the Sassi’s vicinato system. Vicinato
was the name given to the numerous shared courtyards found amongst the
Sassi. The single entrance into many of Matera’s cave homes opened out onto an
enclosed piazza that was shared between different residents. But the term
meant more than just a communal outdoor space where domestic chores were
carried out and children played; it also referred to the social ties and norms that
existed between the different families which lived side by side in different parts
of the Sassi. The vicinato system was significant in terms of the first special law
because the numerous architects and town planners that worked on the
risanamento programme idealized this social and urban system. Moreover, they
attempted to recreate the perceived symbiosis between social bonds and urban
layout in the new housing projects that they designed. The vicinati were viewed
as an organic example of how architecture and urban planning could stitch
30
31
This data is taken from Matera: uno studio, pp. 26-31.
This point is discussed in further detail in section 3.4 of this chapter.
162
together a community’s social fabric. This social and urban system was viewed
as a blueprint for fostering the type of community ties which had been lost in
modern cities, but had survived amongst the Sassi. 32 The romanticized view of
Matera’s vicinati amongst town planners and architects reflected broader urban
planning trends in post-war Italy. Anti-urban sentiments and theories of
decentralization were prevalent in Italian town planning circles. Urban planning
was seen as a means for recovering the social ties that had been lost in large
urban sprawls. These ideas were based on Italian interpretations of Lewis
Mumford and Ebenezer Howard, whose work on regional planning was first
published in Italian in the immediate post-war period.33 Erwin A. Gutkind’s
concept of the ideal community being a homogenous entity founded on social
cohesion was also prevalent amongst Italian architects and urban planners in
the 1950s.34 This helps to explain the interest that town planners and architects
working on the risanamento programme had in Matera’s vicinati. The Study
Commission’s research into the vicinato system and its ability to foster strong
social ties, however, produced ambiguous results. Lidia De Rita carried out a
32
33
34
The idealization of the vincinato system is exemplified by Federico Gorio who worked on the
La Martella project: ‘Quanti urbanisti e quanti sociologi cercano invano la pietra filosofale
dell’unità di vicinato, cioè di quell’ideale nucleo di più famiglie che l’affiatamento sociale,
oltre che il destino della convivenza, tiene in sesto; e questo fanno con lo scopo finale di
riscostruire nei nuclei urbani quel tessuto connettivo che la nostra civiltà con un grave
processo di autonecrosi ha inesorabilmente distrutto. Allora ci si accorge che la vita nei Sassi
di Matera, esempio raro, è organizzata secondo una fitta struttura di legami primari,
socialmente e topograficamente individuati e circoscritti, che la suddividono in tante unità di
vicinato, esattamente come tessuto organico è diviso e al tempo stesso costruito in cellule e
precisamente come gli urbanisti e sociologi vorrebbero cementate le loro città.’ Federico
Gorio, ‘Il villaggio La Martella. Autocritica’, Casabella, (1954), no. 200, pp. 31-38. See also
Luigi Piccinato’s description of Matera’s vicinati in his article ‘Matera’, Urbanistica, (1955),
no. 15-16, pp. 142-151.
For a discussion of Italian interpretations of Mumford’s and Howard’s work in the
immediate post-war period see Chiara Mazzoleni, ‘The Concept of Community in Italian
Town Planning in the 1950s’, Planning Perspectives, vol. 18, (2003), no. 3, pp. 325-342. For a
brief summary of Howard’s Garden City concept see Peter Hall, Urban and Regional Planning,
Routledge, London, 2002 pp. 28-33; for Mumford’s planning philosophy see Lewis Mumford,
The City in History, Penguin, London, 1961.
Mazzoleni, p. 332
163
psychosocial and sociometric study of four different vicinati in the early 1950s.
She aimed to ascertain the impact that the built environment had on social
bonds between different family units living in a vicinato.35
Her preliminary findings suggested that the social cohesion which the
vicinato system was believed to foster had been all but eroded due to economic
hardship. Instead she concluded that the Sassi’s social ties had been replaced
with petty jealousies, gossip, and intrusiveness. Moreover, there were class,
gender and generational tensions amongst the sample of families studied. 36 De
Rita argued, however, that intervention from above could be enough to
redevelop the community spirit that had once been apparent amongst Sassi
residents.37 The implication was that the new rural villages and urban quarters
planned for development under the auspices of the first special could not only
recreate but strengthen the social bonds that the vicinato system had previously
fostered. The numerous town planners and architects that worked on the
risanamento programme shared this philosophy. The belief was that urban
35
36
37
De Rita based her research methods on the work of the psychotherapist Jacob L. Moreno
who, in the 1930s, had formulated a qualitative framework for examining social bonds
amongst New Yorkers. De Rita’s fieldwork at Matera was published as Lidia De Rita,
‘Controllo sociometrico di vicinati di una comunità lucana’, Bollettino di Psicologia applicata,
(1954), no. 4-5, pp. 149-186; Lidia De Rita, ‘Il vicinato come gruppo’, Centro sociale, vol. 2
(1955), no. 1, pp. 3-10; and Lidia De Rita, ‘I Sassi sotto inchiesta’, Civiltà delle macchine,
(1956), no. 2, pp. 26-32.
See De Rita, ‘Controllo sociometrico’, pp. 149-186.
She argued that: ‘il vicinato come gruppo ha avuto una sua funzione precisa ed
indubbiamente positiva per molti aspetti; oggi sembra averla persa nel disorganizzarsi
generale del vecchio mondo, ma forse uno dei mezzi per ricostituire più solidamente e in
un’atmosfera rinnovata e democratica la vecchia trama sociale del mondo contadino è quello
di non lasciar naufragare il vicinato, di valorizzarlo e potenziarlo invece come gruppo sociale
per meglio agire attraverso di esso. Sarà più facile in tal modo assecondare la spinta al
rinnovamento delle nuove generazioni senza lasciare che diventi un motivo di rottura le cui
conseguenze morali possono essere molto dannose; solo così si aiuterà meglio e più
naturalmente il mondo contadino a risolvere con le sue stesse forze i suoi grandi problemi.’
De Rita, ‘Il vicinato come gruppo’, p 10.
164
planning and architecture provided the means to create an ideal community
and promote social improvement.38
3.3 The first special law
Five days after De Gasperi’s first visit to Matera on 23 July 1950 the DC leader
announced that the Italian government would take measures to resolve the
housing situation he had witnessed in the city. Emilio Colombo was asked to
establish a parliamentary commission that would draw up plans for the
risanamento of Matera’s cave homes. On 2 April 1951 Colombo presented a
draft law to the Italian Prime Minister. It closely resembled Mazzocchi Alemanni
and Calia’s 1950 report. The draft law recommended the same three-plank
strategy for resolving Matera’s housing problems. Thus it made provision for
rural villages to rehouse the Sassi’s agricultural workers closer to the land that
they farmed, suburban residential quarters for artisans and urban workers, and
the renovation of cave homes considered fit for habitation. A budget of fourbillion lire would be allocated to implement the project. The data that Colombo
provided on housing conditions and employment, however, was directly copied
from the ECA-sponsored report on the Sassi.39 As a result the housing statistics
that Colombo’s bill presented were taken from a study carried out in 1938 and
not from contemporary data. This exemplified one of the risanamento
38
39
Spencer and Wollman argue that an idealized concept of pre-industrial communities is often
the product of nostalgia for a Tonnies-esque Gemeinschaft characterized by social cohesion,
mutual cooperation, and close interpersonal ties. This view they argue, however, elides the
potential negative aspects of community such as insularity, intolerance of outsiders, and the
close scrutiny of community members. In addition, this romantic view of social bonds tends
to ignore potential class, gender, religious and generational divisions. See Spencer and
Wollman, p. 38.
Ministero dei Lavori Pubblici, Risanamento dei “Sassi” di Matera, Camera dei Deputati,
Disegno di legge n. 2141, 9 August 1951, pp. 1-3
165
programme’s continued problems: draft rehousing plans based on information
that was out of date leading to practical problems when later implemented.
The submission of Colombo’s draft law prompted a local propaganda
campaign in Matera itself. The proposed bill was hailed as the first step in
tackling what Italian politicians and the public sphere had considered to be a
national shame.40 The PCI, however, had put its own provisional law for the
risanamento of the Sassi before parliament on 6 March 1951. This draft bill had
been penned by Michele Bianco, Communist deputy for Potenza and a native of
Miglionico near Matera. Anne Toxey has recently claimed that both draft laws
offered similar solutions for resolving the widely-publicized housing problem at
Matera.41 In fact, Bianco’s draft law contrasted with the government bill on a
number of key points. Instead of building rural villages Bianco had suggested
transferring the estimated 2,142 troglodyte families living in substandard
accommodation to purpose-built council houses in Matera itself. Furthermore,
no explicit provision for renovating existing houses in the Sassi was given.
Rather, the PCI’s draft law implied that existing dwellings declared
uninhabitable should be demolished. In addition, while the government draft
law had a budget of four-billion lire, Bianco in contrast had projected an
expenditure of eight billion lire to complete his urban rehousing project.42
Despite these discrepancies the introductory texts of both draft laws were
40
41
42
The DC produced posters to celebrate the provisional drafting of the special law for Matera.
See ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 661, sottofascicolo A.
Toxey, Materan Contradictions, pp. 90-91
Bianco claimed that it would be more cost effective to demolish the 501 homes which,
according to Crispino’s 1938 report, would need renovation work to render them fit for
habitation. See Bianco, pp. 1-4.
166
similar in tone and content and concurred on one point: the Sassi constituted a
national shame which required prompt and comprehensive state intervention.
A cross-party parliamentary legislative committee was established in the
early months of 1952 to discuss the draft law’s terms and conditions. It met
between February and March of the same year. The proceedings reveal that
Matera’s cave dwellings were considered an issue of national importance in the
early 1950s. It was agreed by all interlocutors that the Sassi were a national
disgrace and that Matera’s housing problems needed to be tackled as soon as
possible. That was the only issue, however, on which there was cross-party
consensus. There were divergent opinions on how the risanamento programme
should best be carried out. But these different viewpoints were not divided
evenly along party or ideological lines. Instead the debate revealed a number of
underlying practical concerns regarding the proposed urban renewal
programme at Matera.
The main issue that divided committee members was the construction of
purpose-built rural villages.43 The PCI representatives argued against the
transfer of Matera’s rural workers to outlying agricultural settlements. Michele
43
Anne Toxey has argued that two urban renewal models were discussed in the context of the
special law for Matera: a systematic rehousing programme versus the renovation of existing
homes. In fact the second issue was only briefly mentioned during the parliamentary
committee’s discussions on the special law. Emilio Colombo outlined that the renovation of
homes in the Sassi deemed fit for habitation would be based on the cost of supplying them
with essential services: water supply, sewage system and electricity. Isolated homes would
not be renovated if providing the services listed above cost more than building new homes
for residents. Moreover, Michele Bianco frequently called for the whole-scale destruction of
the Sassi during his parliamentary interventions on the subject which suggests that a
potential renovation programme was not his main priority regarding special legislation for
Matera. See Toxey, Materan Contradictions, pp. 90-91. For the parliamentary committee
discussions cited see Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII,
Lavori Pubblici, LXIX, 6 February 1952, p. 574; Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede
legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXX, 8 February 1952, p. 578; and Atti
Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, 26 September 1951, p. 30585.
167
Bianco, who had drafted the PCI’s special law, was the most vocal opponent of
the borghi-rurali model. Although not opposed to this concept in principle, he
argued that the decision to rehouse the majority of the Sassi’s cave dwellers in
rural villages had been made without a close examination of the city’s social and
economic characteristics. Moreover, local residents had not been directly
consulted and would have no representatives on the proposed committee that
would implement the special law. Transferring Matera’s estimated 2,000
agricultural families to rural accommodation, Bianco contended, would only be
successful if they were allocated adequately-sized plots of farmland and were
consulted about their housing needs. According to his calculations, however, the
land reform board would have just 1,000 hectares of expropriated land to
distribute at Matera amongst the estimated 1,500 families set to be re-housed in
the three agricultural settlements. This would leave a large number of residents
landless and dependent on securing temporary farm labour at the closest urban
centre, i.e. Matera. Thus, Bianco argued, the planned rural villages would not be
a viable option at Matera. Instead he proposed building 1,500 urban homes and
685 rural dwellings.44
Giulio Spallone, PCI deputy for Abruzzo, also argued against the
construction of rural villages for the Sassi’s agricultural families. He maintained
that there were few unified farms close to Matera. Rather the city’s agricultural
land was divided into small landholdings and rented properties. These plots
44
See Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici,
LXIX, 6 February 1952, p. 573; Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa,
Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXX, 8 February 1952, p. 580; Camera dei Deputati,
Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXXIII, 14 March 1952, pp.
601-602; and Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori
Pubblici, LXXIV, 21 March 1952, p. 614.
168
were scattered in various locations across the city’s agricultural hinterland.
Spallone added the point that braccianti had no fixed workplace. Therefore, he
argued that transferring small landowners, tenant farmers and day labourers to
rural villages would not reduce the amount of time they spent travelling to and
from their workplace and thus increase agricultural productivity as the
government’s draft law claimed. Land allocation was again deemed to be the
key issue regarding the viability of the rural-village model. Spallone argued that
if the land reform board could not guarantee agricultural land for Matera’s
small farmers and landless workers, then the planned rural settlements should
be scrapped.45
Concerns over the suitability and viability of rural villages to rehouse the
Sassi’s agricultural workers, however, were not limited to opposition benches.
Giovanni Perlingieri, DC deputy for Benevento, and Francesco Moro, Christian
Democrat representative for Verona, were equally opposed to implementing
this urban-planning model at Matera. Pierlingieri argued that Matera’s fixedwage labourers, day labourers and tenant farmers had no fixed relationship
with the land they worked and preferred the convenience of urban living to life
in the countryside. Both DC deputies argued that rural workers would need to
be guaranteed an adequate plot of farmland before being transferred to the
proposed new settlements.46
45
46
See Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici,
LXX, 8 February 1952, p. 581; and Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa,
Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXXIV, 21 March 1952, p. 620.
Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXX, 8
February 1952, pp. 580-581
169
Furthermore, the Communist Party was concerned with the proposed
rental charges set out in the government’s draft law. Under these provisions the
Istituto Case Popolari di Matera would set rents based on the price of
construction and maintenance of new properties. Citing examples in the
provincial towns of Miglianico and Stigliano, Michele Bianco feared that many
families would struggle to pay the rents imposed. Instead he suggested that
housing management should be controlled by Matera’s municipal council. A
guarantee would be needed to assure that rents on new homes were fixed at an
affordable rate.47 Pierlingieri and Moro echoed Bianco’s concern over potential
rental prices in the urban and rural housing projects as set out in the DC’s draft
law.48 There appears, however, to have been no consultation with Sassi
residents on this or any of the special law’s provisions. The issue of rental prices
for new residents would become a problem once the first special law was
implemented in the mid-1950s.
Emilio Colombo defended the terms of his draft law. He argued that the
construction of urban dwellings would only resolve the local housing problem.
Instead the transfer of rural workers to purpose-built villages within a 10
kilometre radius of Matera would allow the government to concurrently tackle
an economic problem. Citing Mazzocchi Alemanni and Calia’s report, Colombo
maintained that moving Matera’s rural workers closer to their land would
increase the city’s agricultural productivity. The author of the government’s
47
48
See Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici,
LXIX, 6 February 1952, pp. 572-576; Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa,
Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXX, 8 February 1952, pp. 577-582; Camera dei Deputati,
Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXXIII, 14 March 1952, pp.
601-602; and Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori
Pubblici, LXXIV, 21 March 1952, p. 614.
Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXX, 8
February 1952, p. 581
170
draft law argued that the agricultural reform board would have 3,500 hectares
of land to distribute at Matera. Colombo made it clear that it would not be
possible to transform all of the Sassi’s landless agricultural workers into small
farmers. They could instead be employed by the small farming businesses
created in the context of the projected rural villages. 49
Despite reservations about aspects of the draft law for the Sassi, the
Communist Party ultimately voted in favour of the bill. Following discussions in
the Italian Senate the first special law was passed on 17 May 1952. Similar to
the land reform issue, the PCI found itself in the difficult position of potentially
opposing legislation that it had originally proposed. In the case of Matera,
however, the Communist Party chose to support the DC government’s
intervention, albeit with some caveats. It seems likely that a more nuanced
understanding of the issues in Matera was overridden by the city’s symbolic
importance. PCI deputies had frequently referred to the Sassi as a national
shame in parliamentary discussions and the concept was central to Michele
Bianco’s own draft special law for Matera.50 Opposing the first special law
would arguably have left the Communist Party vulnerable to accusations from
their political opponents of being unpatriotic. The decision, therefore, was made
to reluctantly support the Legge Colombo.
49
50
See Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa, Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici,
LXX, 8 February 1952, pp. 578-579; and Camera dei Deputati, Commissione in sede legislativa,
Commissione VII, Lavori Pubblici, LXXIII, 14 March 1952, pp. 602-603.
Speaking in parliament on 20 February 1950, the PCI deputy Mario Alicata referred to the
Sassi as a ‘vergogna di una nazione civile, vergogna di uno Stato moderno.’ See Atti
Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, 20 February 1951, pp. 26316-26330. See also Michele
Bianco’s parliamentary intervention on 27 February 1951. Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei
Deputati, 27 February 1951, pp. 26560-26564.
171
The first special law had three main criteria. First, the transfer of families
living in homes deemed uninhabitable to new accommodation; second, the
renovation of those houses considered fit for habitation and the provision of
essential public services; and third, the creation of rural villages to rehouse
agricultural workers.51 A programme for implementing the risanamento
programme was to be drawn up within a period of two months by the Prefect of
Matera, the local mayor, the head of the regional council, the president of the
Puglia-Lucania-Molise land reform board, and the head of the regional
agricultural authority. This plan was meant to outline in detail the number of
families that would have to be transferred to new housing as well as those
homes which needed to be renovated. The provisional outline would then have
to be approved by the Ministry of Public Works, the Ministry of Agriculture and
the Ministry of Finance. Furthermore, only those families living in houses
deemed uninhabitable on 1 January 1951 would be eligible to be rehoused in
new accommodation. The decision over which families to relocate would be
made by a commission headed by the local mayor and which included
representatives of the local prefect’s office, the land reform board, the local
office for public works, the agricultural authority, and the local INA-CASA
office.52 Michele Bianco’s draft law had included a provision to have two Sassi
residents as part of the housing commission. This initiative, however, was
rejected by the parliamentary legislative committee that drew up the special
51
52
Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana, 18 June 1952, pp. 2206-2208.
Ibid., pp. 2206-2208
172
law.53 As a result the risanamento programme was carried out without the
consultation of the 15,000 people whose lives it directly impacted.
Local political reaction to the first special law was predictably divided
along ideological lines. A press release from the local administration (the
council, mayor and chamber of commerce) thanked De Gasperi and Colombo for
the draft bill claiming that ‘così sarà un triste ricordo il problema dei Sassi, che
per secoli ha mortificato moralmente e socialmente questa città.’ 54
Furthermore, on 4 April 1951 the DC’s provincial office affixed a number of
posters to publicize the presentation of the draft law for the Sassi to the Italian
Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi. The text claimed that ‘Il secolare problema
della redenzione dei Sassi nei suoi complessi aspetti morali e sociali è affrontato
con decisione e con alta visione umanitaria dal Governo, e si pone fra le
realizzazioni piu imponenti della Democrazia Cristiana.’ 55 The PCI, in contrast,
countered noting that Michele Bianco had first put forward draft legislation for
Matera. Writing in L’Unità Michele Guanti claimed that the DC had simply
appropriated Bianco’s legislation for political ends and would fail to keep its
promise to implement the bill.56 Similar to the DC government’s land reform
bill, therefore, the Communist Party once again found itself in the difficult
position of criticizing a state intervention programme that it had originally
proposed.
53
54
55
56
Raguso, p. 35
ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 661, sottofascicolo A
ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 661, sottofascicolo A
Writing in L’Unità in 1952, PCI deputy Michele Guanti claimed that ‘il problema dei Sassi si è
sentito direttamente dagli abitanti dei Sassi che vogliano uscire dale grotte e dicono basta a
questa vergogna di inciviltà e umanità.’ See Michele Guanti, ‘I cittadini del Materano non
credono più alle promesse D.C.’, L’Unità, 7 April 1952, p. 2.
173
It is difficult to gauge popular reaction to the first special law amongst
Sassi residents, but police reports, official documents and newspaper accounts
provide some fragments of local opinion, albeit filtered through official and
political channels. Official reports suggest that Sassi residents greeted the first
special law with a sense of cautious optimism. In a letter to the Prefect of
Matera dated 5 April 1951 the local police commissioner, Dr. L. Russo, claimed
that the announcement of special legislation for Matera’s cave dwellings ‘è stato
favorevolmente commentato ed apprezzato da tutta la cittadinanza.’57 Writing
later the same month, however, the local prefect contended that the local
population were sceptical about the government’s promise to implement the
special law.58 Official documents, moreover, reveal that a number of local
residents took part in popular protests in the early 1950s calling on the Italian
government to provide them with new housing. For example, during Mario
Cotellessa’s visit to Matera in his role as Alto Commissario per l’Igiene e la Sanità
in April 1950, an estimated 100 women blocked the official’s car in an attempt
to make him visit their homes.59 Furthermore, in March 1952 a small group of
women from the neighbourhoods of Casalnuovo and Madonna della Virtù
presented a petition to the local mayor calling for the construction of 2,000
homes and the risanamento of the Sassi.60 These protests suggest that there was
popular pressure from a number of local residents to provide alternative
accommodation for Matera’s cave dwellers. A similar viewpoint was expressed
57
58
59
60
See ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 661, sottofascicolo A.
He claimed that the ‘progetto di legge presentato, appasiona l’opinone pubblica in modo
particolare pur rimanendo alla superficie un attegiamento di diffidente attesa verso il
Governo.’ See ACS, MI, Gabinetto, Fascicoli permanenti, Atti, busta 210, relazioni mensili 5052.
See ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 80.
See ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 661, sottofascicolo A.
174
by a local Sassi resident during an interview published in L’Unità in 1952. The
unnamed woman told Aniello Coppola that ‘vogliamo i diritti umani e una casa
igienica come la Costituzione parla e vogliamo vivere in pace … vogliamo fuggire
da questo “sasso”’.61 Tullio Tentori found similar sentiments amongst Sassi
residents during his research for the Study Commission in the early 1950s. The
people interviewed called for improved housing to replace the humid and
overcrowded living conditions of their cave homes. One resident described his
house as ‘veramente un’abitazione da cani e non da persone civili’ while
another declared that ‘come vedete dormiamo nell’acqua ed anche le bestie
vivono come la mia famiglia. Di fronte a un popolo civile. Vergognatevi
autorità.’62 These reactions suggest that narratives of national shame and
modernity generated in the context of post-war Matera may have influenced
popular attitudes towards the Sassi amongst a number of residents. Anne Toxey
has argued that notions of national shame were a means through which the
local population was persuaded to move to new housing. She contends that as a
result Sassi residents shunned their former homes in favour of the promise of
modern housing.63 Tentori, in contrast, argued that there was a new sense of
social justice amongst Matera’s poorest inhabitants in the post-war period. Sassi
residents, he contended, believed that they were entitled to better housing
conditions and had begun to voice their opinions openly. Ideas of national
shame and modernity generated in the context of post-war Matera may have
impacted notions of what constituted acceptable housing for the Sassi residents
that Tentori questioned in the early 1950s. At the same time, however, it is
61
62
63
Aniello Coppola, ‘La vita delle donne nei Sassi di Matera’, L’Unità, 24 April 1952, p. 6
Tentori, pp. 25-27
Toxey, ‘Via Media’, p. 73
175
important to acknowledge the agency of those people interviewed who called
for improved living standards for themselves and their families. Speaking in
1985 Friedrich Friedmann claimed that the work of the Study Commission in
the early 1950s clearly showed that the majority of Sassi residents were
enthusiastic about the idea of moving to and owning their own homes and farm
land. In contrast, he argued, it was middle-class landlords who rented out cave
dwellings as well as local shop keepers who were opposed to the transfer of
Sassi residents to new accommodation. They feared that the risanamento
programme would result in a loss of income.64 This suggests that there were
class divisions over the implementation of special legislation for the Sassi with
local residents pushing for new housing and landlords opposed to development
plans for financial reasons. It would, however, be mistaken to make sweeping
claims about the amount of popular support for the state rehousing programme
at Matera and the subsequent special law amongst Sassi residents. The evidence
is fragmentary and in many cases has been filtered through official documents
and the party press. It does seem clear, however, that a section of the estimated
15,000 people living in Matera’s cave homes had called for the state to provide
them with new housing. There was, however, little or no consultation with the
families that the special law would directly affect once legislation was
implemented. Apart from the Study Commission’s work and the PCI deputy
Michele Bianco’s call for two Sassi residents to be included on the special law’s
housing commission, there appears to have been no political will to consult the
local population. Instead the risanamento programme was implemented from
64
Friedmann, Miseria e dignità, p. 70
176
above.65 This oversight reflects the paternalistic nature of state intervention at
Matera. The implication of this approach is that government officials and
national politicians assumed that the local population would be unable to make
any noteworthy contribution to the risanamento programme. Rather the
modernisation of Matera was the responsibility of the Italian state. This
arguably reflected the widely-held notion in post-war Italian politics that the
South was incapable of reforming itself. Images of Matera as a symbol of the
southern question and a national shame contributed to shaping this narrative
post-1945. This idea appears to have directly influenced the city’s post-war
history. In practical terms the lack of consultation with Sassi residents would
result in a number of infrastructural and social problems for the new housing
projects when the first special law was implemented in the 1950s. These
difficulties will be examined in the next section.
3.4 Implementing the risanamento programme
Following the approval of the first special law for Matera on 17 May 1952 the
city’s Office of Public Works (OPW) produced a provisional report on how the
legislation would be implemented.66 The data on housing conditions that the
65
66
During interviews carried out with three former Sassi residents in 1987, Angelo Del Parigi
and Rosalba Demetrio noted that: ‘quando nella conversazione con le fonti si tocca il tasto
del risanamento dei Sassi, del grande programma di costruzione di rioni e borghi rurali
volute dalla legge 619 del ‘52, le risposte si fanno evasive, gli sguardi più schivi del solito, gli
atteggiamenti tradiscono un certo imbarazzo. Stati d’animo autentici, manifestati della
volontà altrui, quasi non si avesse il diritto o non ci si ritenesse degni di pensare e di dire la
‘propria’ sulla questione.’ See Del Parigi and Demetrio, p. 27. The implication is that local
residents did not feel that they could voice their opinion on the risanamento programme.
This arguably reflects the fact that Sassi residents were not consulted during the
implementation of the special law and felt excluded from the decision making process.
See Riccardo Lubrano, Risanamento dei rioni “Sassi” nell’abitato del comune di Matera (legge
17-5-1972 n. 619). Programma delle opere e degli interventi, Repubblica italiana, Ministero
dei Lavori Pubblici, Provveditorato regionale alle opere pubbliche per la Basilicata, 1952.
Located in ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 82,
fascicolo 662, sottofascicolo B.
177
report laid out shaped early plans for the amount of rural and urban housing
that would need to be built to rehouse families living in substandard housing.
The OPW compiled its report collating data from the local prefect’s office, the
local mayor, the president of the regional council, the local land reform office,
the agricultural inspection authority and the UNRRA-CASAS sponsored Study
Commission. The report concluded that there were 3,374 homes located in the
Sassi. Of these just 43 were deemed to be inhabitable, 859 were judged to be in
need of renovation and 2,472 were considered uninhabitable. In addition, the
OPW draft programme included data on the employment profile of the 2,581
families living in Matera’s cave homes. An estimated 1,653 of this total carried
out work connected to Matera’s urban centre: artisans, small business owners,
and construction workers. The report, therefore, recommended that these
families should be rehoused in three urban neighbourhoods. The remaining 928
families, in contrast, worked primarily in agriculture. Data on the subdivision of
these agricultural workers into small landowners, tenant farmers, fixed-wage
labourers and casual labourers was not provided in the OPW plan. However, the
report made provision for the transfer of these 928 agricultural families to
purpose-built rural villages in Matera’s hinterland: 36 families would be
transferred to the village of Venusio, 55 to Santa Lucia, 200 families to La
Martella, 139 families to Timmari-Picciano, 118 to Murge and Torre Spagnola,
and 380 landless families to semi-rural villages close to Matera.67
The OPW claimed to have taken the availability of agricultural land into
consideration when drawing up plans for the location and size of rural villages.
67
Of these projects only the villages of La Martella and Venusio would be completed during the
scope of this study. For the data reported above see Lubrano, p. 4.
178
It claimed that 900 hectares of demesne land at Lucinano-Picciano outside
Matera would be expropriated and then be made available for distribution to
landless workers. The OPW report made it clear that many of the families to be
rehoused in rural villages already owned or rented land in Matera’s agricultural
hinterland. The size of the proposed rural villages, however, was not set in
stone. The report made it clear that its results would be subject to the
availability of appropriate agricultural land. It is clear from the OPW report that
its findings were provisional. There was a clear acknowledgement that the
rehousing programme would need to be flexible and that a more accurate study
would have to be carried out before a final decision on the number of cave
homes to be permanently closed could be made.68
In 1952 the Ministry of Public Works entrusted the architect Luigi
Piccinato with overseeing Matera’s rehousing programme. Piccinato was asked
to draft a comprehensive town planning programme for the city, i.e. the Piano
Regionale Generale (PRG).69 UNRRA-CASAS had started constructing the village
of La Martella prior to the special law’s enactment and Alcide De Gasperi
inaugurated the project on 17 May 1953.70 In October of the same year the
Ministry of Public Works launched an architectural design competition to
tender submissions for the remaining rural villages and urban quarters to be
built under the terms of the special law. The winning designs were announced
68
69
70
See Lubrano’s 1952 report.
See the series of letters between the Prefect of Matera, the Ministry of Public Works and the
Regional Office for Public Works found in ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto
(Ricovero 1990), busta 82, fascicolo 662, sottofascicolo B. For an outline and discussion of
Piccinato’s PRG for Matera see Piccinato, pp. 142-151; Raguso, pp. 51-63; Restucci and
Tafuri, pp. 67-70; and Leonardo Sacco, ‘Matera ‘61’, in Giorgio Baglieri, Marcello Fabbri and
Leonardo Sacco (eds.), Cronache dei tempi lunghi: Basilicata e mezzogiorno verso gli anni 60,
Lacaita, Manduria, 1965, pp. 406-412.
Chapter 4 examines the construction of La Martella in detail.
179
in November 1954. However, only three urban neighbourhoods and one rural
village were completed under the auspices of the first special law. The
construction process and early lives of these housing schemes proved to be
problematic. Examining these projects individually will help to shed light on the
first special law’s implementation and its limitations which will then be reevaluated in detail.
Serra Venerdì
Serra Venerdì was the largest urban neighbourhood built under the umbrella of
the first special law. The residential quarter was designed to provide 828 new
homes and 62 additional buildings for essential services, including 37 shops. It
was built on a hill overlooking the UNRRA-CASAS village La Martella. In 1954 a
national competition was held to tender designs for Serra Venerdì. Luigi
Piccinato and Luisa Anversa Ferretti were entrusted with drawing up the
blueprint for the project’s urban layout. Housing design and the construction
contract were awarded to a team of architects and engineers which included
Leonardo Favini, Luigi Aversa, Roberto Pontecorvo, Renzo Giorgetti and Aldo
Pinto. There was an attempt to reflect some of the distinguishing features of
regional design in Serra Venerdì’s housing. The shape of windows and loggia
and the type of blinds and fireplaces chosen were loosely modelled on local
architecture.71
Building work on the residential neighbourhood started in May 1955
and there were 430 families living there one year later. Emilio Colombo, the DC
71
See ‘Il quartiere “B” Serra Venerdì, Casabella continuità, (1959), no. 231, pp. 25-28 and ASM,
Genio Civile, Versamento VII, busta 94. For an appraisal of the project’s architectural merits
see Raguso, pp. 113-120.
180
deputy for Potenza and the region’s most influential politician, oversaw the
official opening ceremony in May 1956. This formal inauguration was covered
in the national press and featured in an official newsreel. Serra Venerdì’s second
lot of 260 new houses was officially inaugurated on 22 December 1957.72
Despite the government fanfare which accompanied Serra Venerdì’s
inauguration, however, the project was beset by a number of problems from the
outset. Archival sources from 1956-1958 reveal that residents complained to
the local prefect and the local Genio Civile office about faulty fixtures and
fittings in their homes, leaking rainwater during bad weather, blocked sewage
systems, inadequate storage space and a lack of public amenities. The
neighbourhood’s road and footpath infrastructure was incomplete and there
was no street lighting. There were reports of ground-floor flooding and the
degradation of the existing road network.73 Furthermore, residents complained
about the amount of rent that they were expected to pay for their new homes
and the separate rate for nearby allotments.74 Many families relocated to Serra
Venerdì had owned their former cave homes in the Sassi or had paid lower
rents compared to their new accommodation. The transfer to more expensive
housing created financial hardship for the majority of residents who were
72
73
74
‘Altri seicento alloggi popolari a Matera nuova tappa per il risanamento dei Sassi’, Corriere
del Giorno, 22 December 1957, p. 5. An official newsreel was dedicated to the inauguration
ceremony held at Serra Venerdì and Lanera on 22 December 1957. See La Settimana INCOM,
Scompaiono i “Sassi”, (Italy, 1958).
A letter from the Associazione Autonoma degli Inquilini del Rione Serra Venerdì dated 28
September 1956, just four months after the project’s official inauguration, outlined the
housing problems listed above. Moreover, a letter from Dr. Salvatore Masciandro, president
of the Istituto autonomo per le case popolari Matera, to the local council, prefect and genio
civile office documented the problems with Serra Venerdì’s road infrastructure and revealed
that many of the earlier housing problems had persisted into 1958. See ASM, Genio Civile,
Versamento VII, busta 21. For further documentation on Serra Venerdì’s infrastructural
problems see ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo, 668, sottofascicolo 6.
Article 13 of the first special law had fixed rental prices on new homes built to rehouse Sassi
residents at 0.5 per cent of the building cost. See Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana,
18 June 1952, pp. 2206-2208.
181
employed in manual labour or were pensioners with modest incomes. 75 Official
documents show that 137 of the 536 families at Serra Venerdì were in arrears
with their rent in June 1957. Eviction notices were served to the indebted
parties later the same month. Over the next year a number of residents only
managed to avoid eviction thanks to last-minute financial assistance from
family members and local public figures.76 Local officials were faced with the
prospect of evicting people that had been transferred from the Sassi less than a
year earlier. In addition there was growing civil unrest amongst residents
coupled as well as political agitation from the PCI. 77 In February 1958 rents at
Serra Venerdì were reduced by 30 lire per month following direct intervention
from the Minister for Public Works.78 The Sassi commission’s failure to
recognise that increased rental prices would be an issue for families transferred
to new housing at Serra Venerdì reflects the fact that there was no consultation
75
76
77
78
A petition dated 20 July 1957 from approximately 50 local residents calling for lower rental
prices argued that ‘i sottoscritti abitavano le note case del Sasso e per tali case pagavano un
irrisorio affitto di poche migliaia di lire all’anno. Invece ora devono pagare dale 3 alle 6 mila
lire al mese, e per causa di disoccupazione, di malattie, di invalidità, di pensioni minime … si
vedono costretti a non pagare la pigione.’ See ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82,
fascicolo 671, sottofascicolo 3. For detailed information on rental payments at Serra Venerdì
see ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 671, sottofascicolo 1; and ASM,
Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 671, sottofascicolo 3.
See, for example, a report from Matera’s police commissioner entitled ‘Serra Venerdì
(Matera) – Sfratto di assegnatari di alloggi’ about the attempted eviction of four families on
31 July 1957. ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 671, sottofascicolo 3. This
incident was also covered in the local newspaper Basilicata. See the article ‘Intimati a Matera
150 sfratti agli abitanti di Serra Venerdì’, Basilicata, 2 August 1957, p. 4. Additional
documentation on threatened evictions from Serra Venerdì is contained in ASM, Prefettura
(Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 671, sottofascicolo 2.
Local members of the PCI organized a public meeting at Serra Venerdì on 22 July 1957 in
opposition to the threatened evictions. See report from the local police in ASM, Prefettura
(Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 671, sottofascicolo 3. Moreover, a number of articles on
the issue were published in L’Unità. See ‘Lo sfratto incombe su 50 famiglie del rione Serra
Venerdì di Matera’, L’Unità, 26 June 1957, page number not available; Giuseppe Palmieri,
‘Hanno ricevuto le intimazioni di pagamento 44 assegnatari delle case popolari di Matera’,
L’Unità, 30 June 1957, page number not available.
See letter dated 20 February 1958 from the Minister of Public Works to the Prefect of Matera
and local genio civile in ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 671, sottofascicolo
3.
182
with Sassi residents. Instead state intervention at Matera ignored the social and
economic exigencies of the local population.
Lanera
Lanera was the smallest of the three urban neighbourhoods built under the
terms of the first special law for the Sassi. It was planned to provide 353
residential homes, 30 public buildings and 19 shops on a site close to the city’s
sixteenth-century castle overlooking the Piano.79 The quarter’s design was
awarded to the architect Mario Coppi and the engineer Marcello Fabbri. In
contrast to the reinforced concrete used at Serra Venerdì and Spine Bianche,
Lanera’s designers incorporated the use of local building materials and
techniques, such as tufa rock and adobe bricks, into the design of their threestorey apartment blocks.80 Construction work on Lanera started in 1956 and on
22 December 1957 Emilio Colombo, the then Minister for Agriculture, and
Giacomo Sedati, undersecretary at the Ministry of Public Works, visited Matera
to officially inaugurate the project. This event was covered in the national press
and was the subject of an official newsreel. 81 In a letter to Adone Zoli, the then
Italian Prime Minister, the Prefect of Matera argued that Lanera’s upcoming
inauguration was of national significance ‘in quanto essa rappresenta la
concreta attuazione di un impegno del Governo.’82 The media coverage of this
79
80
81
82
See Doria, pp. 47-52; and ‘Altri seicento alloggi popolari a Matera nuova tappa per il
risanamento dei Sassi’, Corriere del Giorno, 22 December 1957, p. 5.
For an in-depth discussion of Lanera’s urban layout and design see Raguso, pp. 140-143.
See ‘Altri seicento alloggi popolari a Matera nuova tappa per il risanamento dei Sassi’,
Corriere del Giorno, 22 December 1957, p. 5 and ‘Sorgono moderni villaggi di villette intorno
all’inferno di pietra. Presto i “sassi” di Matera saranno abbandonati dagli uomini’, Il Giornale
del Mezzogiorno, 2-9 January 1958, p. 3. An official newsreel was dedicated to the
inauguration ceremony held at Serra Venerdì and Lanera on 22 December 1957. See La
Settimana INCOM, Scompaiono i “Sassi” (Italy, 1958).
In addition, Matera’s prefect argued that visits from erstwhile Italian Prime Minister’s (De
Gasperi and Antonio Segni) had ‘determinato tali favorevoli ripercussioni di carattere
183
event showed that Matera was still deemed to be of national importance in
terms of government propaganda and promoting the intervento straordinario.
In contrast to the infrastructural issues and resulting social tensions
experienced at Serra Venerdì in the late 1950s, the primary source material on
Lanera suggests that the project experienced fewer teething problems. In
October 1959, however, local residents sent a petition to Emilio Colombo
complaining about the lack of a public oven and the fact that the proposed green
space had been left unplanted leading to sand blowing into their homes during
bad weather.83 Despite the fact that Lanera had featured in government
propaganda to promote the DC’s development programme for southern Italy,
the neighbourhood fell into a state of neglect in the late 1950s.
Spine Bianche
Spine Bianche was the last of the three urban quarters built under the auspices
of the special law to be completed. The project, located to the north west of
Matera, was designed to provide 687 houses for 3,500 people as well as 24
shops, 24 artisan workshops, municipal buildings a church, a market and a
crèche. The project’s urban layout was awarded to a team of architects headed
by Carlo Aymonino. Moreover, Giancarlo De Carlo, Mario Fiorentino, Felice
Gorio, Hilda Selam and Vito Sangirardi were entrusted with the building
design.84 An attempt was made in Spine Bianche’s overall plans to recreate and
83
84
politico e psicologico.’ See the letter dated 11 December 1957 in ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero
90), busta 82, fascicolo 668.
See ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 668, sottofasciolo 4.
The other architects involved in drawing up Spine Bianche’s urban layout were C. Chiarini,
M. Girelli, S. Lenci and M. Ottolenghi. See Sergio Lenci, ‘Esperienza nella progettazione del
quartiere Spine Bianche a Matera’, Casabella Continuità, (1959), no. 231, pp. 21-22. For
information on Spine Bianche’s housing design see the Ufficio del Genio Civile’s report dated
25 August 1959 in ASM, Genio Civile, Versamento 0, busta 62.
184
foster the social ties of Matera’s vicinati.85 Construction was started in 1955 and
the first lot of houses were handed over to new residents in 1959. The public
buildings and the neighbourhood’s road network, however, were still
unfinished when the village was inaugurated.86 A second lot of houses and the
remaining amenities were finally completed in 1964 but Spine Bianche quickly
fell into a state of disrepair due to the lack of public services that the local
council provided to the new neighbourhood.87
It is significant that no national politicians took part in Spine Bianche’s
inauguration and there was no national press coverage of this event in contrast
to the fanfare that had greeted the official opening of Matera’s other new urban
neighbourhoods. By 1959 Matera had lost its symbolic importance in terms of
promoting government intervention in southern Italy. Land reform and the
southern question had decreased in political importance with the onset of
Italy’s economic boom and a period of rural exodus as millions of Italians
swapped agriculture for life and work in one of Italy’s rapidly growing urban
centres.88 This process resulted in a change in political focus and meant that, in
the context of official propaganda, the risanamento programme’s political
currency had all but disappeared and by 1959 Spine Bianche, like the
risanamento programme, had become an anachronism.
85
86
87
88
Writing in Casabella Continuità Sergio Lenci, one of the architects that worked on Spine
Bianche, revealed that the Sassi’s vicinati had captivated his team of architects and that they
had proposed building a series of houses with closed courtyards in an attempt to preserve
the traditional social bonds of Matera’s cave dwellers. See Lenci, p. 21.
See the interview with Oronzo Vincenzo Manicone, one of Spine Bianche’s original residents,
in Doria, p. 57.
For an account of Spine Bianche’s degradation see Doria, pp. 55-59
This point is developed in detail below. See pp. 208-211.
185
Venusio
Borgo Venusio was the second rural village built to house agricultural workers
from the Sassi under the terms of the special law for Matera (the first village, La
Martella, is the subject of the next chapter). Luigi Piccinato was awarded the
design contract for the project. Venusio was to be built 7.5 kilometres from
Matera next to a partially abandoned village that the Opera Nazionale
Combattenti had constructed in 1927 to house demobbed soldiers. The new
project at Venusio planned to rehouse 66 agricultural families living in the Sassi
closer to the agricultural land that they worked. In addition the village would
provide municipal buildings, a post office, a police station, a doctor’s surgery,
seven shops, a crèche, a social centre, a primary school and a Catholic church.89
Alcide De Gasperi laid the first stone at Venusio in an official ceremony
on 17 May 1953 following the inauguration of the UNRRA-CASAS sponsoredvillage La Martella. UNRRA-CASAS was entrusted with overseeing the
construction work at Venusio which started in 1954. The 66 houses were
completed in 1956 but the project was beset by a number of problems. There
were delays in completing Venusio’s public buildings, road network, water and
sewage systems, and in the provision of electricity.90 Moreover, there were
problems securing the estimated 350 hectares of land to be allocated to families
relocated from the Sassi. 91 As a result Venusio was still uninhabited in the early
89
90
91
See the report ‘Per la costruzione degli Edifici Pubblici del Borgo “Venusio” a Matera’ in ASM,
Genio Civile, VII Versamento, busta 117.
In a letter dated 17 July 1955 to Emilio Colombo, Matera’s prefect wrote that ‘l’esecuzione di
dette opere [public buildings and essential services] è indispensabile per poter procedere
all’assegnazione delle case coloniche, altrimenti le case stesse costruite e completate
rimarranno chiuse per parecchio tempo.’ See ASM, Prefeturra (Ricovero 90), busta 82,
fascicolo 663.
See the letter to Emilio Colombo from the Prefect of Matera dated 30 January 1956. The
prefect wrote that the ‘trasferimento delle famiglie in quella zona [Venusio] si presenta
186
1960s and a number of buildings were subsequently illegally occupied. The
project was fully completed in the 1970s, but its houses were instead allocated
to non-agricultural workers.92 In the 1960s an additional 62 houses were built
at the rural village Picciano and 121 new homes at the semi-rural quarter Agna
as part of the risanamento project, but the projected rural villages at Santa Lucia
and Torre Spagnola would never be constructed following the land reform
board’s failure to secure the agricultural land needed to render the projects
viable.93 As a result the borghi rurali model that Mazzocchi Alemanni and Calia
had put forward was abandoned and instead the risanamento programme
became an urban housing project. The decision to discard the rural-village
model reflects the failure to understand the complex pattern of landholding at
Matera. This oversight stemmed from the lack of consultation with local
residents who worked in agriculture. Instead a broad model for restructuring
southern Italian agriculture was applied to a specific local context. This point
arguably reflects the impact that notions of Matera as a symbol of the southern
question prevalent in post-war Italy had on the risanamento programme for the
Sassi. The city was seen as emblematic of a generic idea of southern Italian
agriculture and therefore provided a testing ground for theories on how to
reorganize and modernize the Mezzogiorno’s agricultural economy.
92
93
quanto mai difficile per mancanza di terre disponibili da assegnare alle famiglie stesse.’ ASM,
Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 669, sottofascicolo 2. For further information on
problems with Venusio see the Ufficio del Genio Civile di Matera’s 1956 report ‘La prima fase
del risanamento dei “Sassi” di Matera. Orientamenti per il completamento dell’opera sulla
base dell’esperienza acquisita’ in ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 674,
sottofascicolo. 3.
Sacco, Matera contemporanea, p. 53
Notably the houses built at Picciano A and B were never officially allocated to families from
the Sassi but a number of buildings were and continue to be illegally occupied. See Doria, pp.
67-69.
187
Re-evaluating the first special law
The implementation of the first special law for Matera was beset by a series of
problems as outlined above. There had been a failure to secure the agricultural
land needed to create the five viable rural villages that the special law had
provisionally planned to build. There were also delays in completing the three
urban neighbourhoods built under the terms of the risanamento programme
and then problems with the housing and essential services provided to new
residents. Why were there so many problems with such a high-profile
development project? The explanations offered in the existing secondary
literature on the risanamento programme fail to adequately explain the
project’s shortcomings. Manfredo Tafuri’s writing on post-war Matera has been
highly influential on recent secondary literature.94 He attributes the first special
law’s limitations to deliberate ideological decisions that the DC government
made. However, Tafuri’s work is ideologically driven and neglects to examine a
number of important primary source documents on the first special law’s
implementation. This oversight has been compounded in a number of
subsequent secondary sources on the risanamento programme which have
accepted Tafuri’s arguments a priori without consulting the relevant archival
material to test his contentious claims. It is apposite, therefore, to reassess the
94
Manfredo Tafuri is considered to be one of Italy’s most important post-war architectural
historians. In 1974, in conjunction with the architect and academic Amerigo Restucci, Tafuri
produced a short book on the history of the Sassi in the context of the OPW’s public
competition for restoring the Sassi. The book provides a detailed and comprehensive
account of the Matera’s post-war history despite its relative brevity. However, the work’s
ideological position and the arguments that it puts forward have arguably cast too long a
shadow over subsequent research. Tafuri was a member of the Italian Communist Party.
This point has not been taken into consideration in recent secondary literature. Instead
Tafuri’s arguments have too often been accepted a priori when supplemental analysis of
relevant primary source material was needed to test some of his more contentious
conclusions. For an intellectual biography of Tafuri see Andrew Leach, Manfredo Tafuri:
Choosing History, A&S Books, Ghent, 2007.
188
first special law’s implementation in the context of Tafuri’s work on Matera.
This will shed light on the reasons behind the project’s many limitations.
First, Tafuri argues that the wholesale transfer of Sassi residents to new
housing and the closure of their cave homes were avoidable. He claims that
these decisions were made for political reasons. Local and national bureaucrats,
it is argued, deliberately overlooked the data that Friedmann and his team
produced on the Sassi. The Study Commission had concluded that there were
3,329 dwellings amongst the Sassi. Of these 158 were deemed inhabitable,
1,676 could be renovated and reused, 986 were uninhabitable and 509 could be
adapted for other purposes (such as stables or warehouses). In contrast, the
OPW report upon which the implementation of the special law was based had
decided that there were 3,374 homes amongst the Sassi. Just 43 houses were
deemed fit for habitation, 859 were suitable for renovation and 2,472 were
considered uninhabitable. Tafuri contends that the OPW’s decision to declare
the majority of Sassi homes unfit for living was taken for political reasons. He
argues that by ‘spostando la massima parte dei fondi di stanziamento verso la
creazione di borgate esterne, si punta alla dispersione e alla frantumazione di
un nucleo sociale politicamente combattivo.’95 This argument has been repeated
in two recent books on post-war Matera which draw heavily on Tafuri’s work.96
There are, however, a number of problems with this contention. First,
there is no evidence in the primary source material on the special law’s
implementation that the Study Commission’s data was deliberately discarded.
Rather archival sources suggest that the provisional decision to rehouse Sassi
95
96
Restucci and Tafuri, p. 60
See in particular Raguso, p. 38 and Toxey, Materan Contradictions, pp. 88-90.
189
residents living in homes deemed fit for habitation was the result of urban
planning and economic factors rather than ideological concerns. It was
considered too expensive to provide essential services to isolated homes in
parts of the Sassi that would need to be largely abandoned. This point explains
the difference in housing data that the OPW and Study Commission produced.97
Tafuri brands the OPW’s argument specious and claims that the special law
acted merely as a pretext for the ‘cosciente distruzione del Sasso.’ 98 However,
primary sources illustrate that the debate on the renovation of the Sassi’s cave
homes, and how best this process should be carried out, continued throughout
the 1950s. The OPW’s 1952 report on how to implement the risanamento
programme was provisional and subject to change. This point is exemplified in
the OPW’s 1956 study of the Sassi. It found errors in its 1952 study and
provided alternative data on the number of cave homes that would need to be
abandoned and those that could be renovated.99 This suggests that the decision
to empty the Sassi was not firmly established from the approval of the special
law onwards as Tafuri contends. Rather the risanamento programme was a
reactive process characterized by revisions and on-going discussion amongst
the civil servants tasked with implementing its provisions.
97
98
99
See Lubrano’s 1952 report.
Restucci and Tafuri, p. 60
Writing in 1956, the chief engineer of Basilicata’s OPW underlined the fundamental need to
reassess living conditions in the Sassi based solely on hygienic criteria and not on the urban
planning considerations put forward in the OPW’s original 1952 report. Only at that point,
he argued, could a final decision on how many existing caves homes would need to be
permanently closed be made. This point illustrates that the risanamento programme was not
unilateral or guided by a single ideological thrust. Rather it appears that the first special law
was a complicated process in which civil servants reacted to on-going demographic and
urban developments. See G. Travaglini, ‘La prima fase del risanamento dei “Sassi” di Matera.
Orientamenti per il completamento dell’opera sulla base dell’esperienza acquisita’, Ufficio
del Genio Civile di Matera, Provveditore regionale alle OO.PP. per la Basilicata, 5 November
1956, in ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 674, sottofascicolo 3.
190
Furthermore, the claim that the DC deliberately emptied the Sassi in
order to transfer a politically engaged and combative community across the
surrounding countryside is problematic. It presumes that the estimated 15,000
inhabitants of Matera’s cave homes were a socially and politically cohesive
group. This viewpoint elides the generational, gender and class tensions which
appear to have existed amongst Sassi residents in the early 1950s.100 Moreover,
Tafuri seems to ignore the fact that the reports of sporadic protest at Matera in
the immediate post-war period were directly linked to calls for new housing.
His argument overlooks the political agency of those local residents who wished
to leave the Sassi and move to new accommodation. Tafuri’s claim that the
Sassi’s agricultural and rural workers were part of a socially and politically
integrated community appears to be based on an idealized concept of a preindustrial Gemeinschaft rather than the fragments of evidence on life amongst
the Sassi found in primary source material.101 Tafuri also ignores the political
pressure from the PCI to transfer residents to new accommodation. Speaking
about the Sassi in parliament in 1951 the PCI deputy Michele Bianco, who had
presented the first draft law for the Sassi to parliament, had declared that ‘vi è
qualcosa da distruggere nella mia terra, e cioè i “Sassi”.’ 102 Similar sentiments
are found in additional parliamentary interventions on the topic from
100
101
102
See for example the reference to new attitudes amongst younger Sassi residents and the
resultant intergenerational conflict that it created in Tullio Tentori, Il sistema di vita della
comunità materana. Riassunto di un’inchiesta etnologica, vol. III, UNRRA-Casas Prima Giunta,
Rome, 1956, pp. 24-25.
This point is all the more surprising given that Restucci and Tafuri chastise the different
urban planners and architects involved in the risanamento programme for romanticizing the
Sassi’s vicinati, but then appear to have made similar claims themselves regarding the
apparent sense of political solidarity amongst Matera’s cave dwellers prior to the special
law’s implementation. See Restucci and Tafuri, p. 48.
Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, 26 September 1951, p. 30585
191
Communist deputies.103 No call for the renovation of the Sassi has been found
amongst contemporary politicians that discussed the special law’s provisions.
Instead the political will on both sides of the Cold War divide was that Matera’s
cave homes constituted a national shame and should be permanently
abandoned. This viewpoint was not limited to the Christian Democrats as Tafuri
implies.
Second, Tafuri claims that the failure to locate agricultural land for the
projected five rural villages outside Matera, and the subsequent decision to
abandon this concept in favour of building urban dwellings, were part of a
broader government strategy. He argues that the risanamento programme at
Matera reflected the DC’s attempts to force agricultural workers off the land and
into the building trade with the final aim of creating a cheap labour force for
northern Italy’s expanding industrial sector.104 Tafuri provides no additional
sources to back up this contention. Again this analysis of the special law’s
implementation has been repeated a priori in a number of recent secondary
sources.105 The argument that Matera was part of a larger economic plan to
create a cheap labour force for northern industry, however, is debatable for a
number of reasons. Primary sources pertaining to the risanamento programme
reveal no trace of a broader conspiracy to derail the allocation of agricultural
103
104
105
See for example Mario Alicata’s intervention on the Sassi: Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei
Deputati, 20 February 1951, pp. 26316-26330.
Tafuri argues that the special law’s implementation ‘exemplified the role that the great
industrial capital had assigned to underdevelopment: the underdeveloped area was
managed as a pool of reserve labour for industrialized areas. To achieve this the agricultural
vocation of the south was stressed, the service sector was artificially expanded, and a policy
of public works instigated to stimulate consumerism in the south … public works and
building functioned as a means of containing unemployment and providing training for
agricultural groups that would later on be encouraged to migrate to developed areas. There
they would form a reserve force, enabling producers to keep wages low.’ Manfredo Tafuri,
History of Italian Architecture, 1944-1985, The MIT Press, London, 1989, pp. 24-25. These
points are also made in Restucci and Tafuri, p. 67 and p. 70.
See Toxey, Materan Contradictions, p. 146 and Raguso, pp. 39-40.
192
land to Matera’s landless workers. Rather they suggest that the implementation
of the first special law was uncoordinated and reactive. The decision to plan
rural villages for Matera’s cave dwellers was based on flawed research that
Mazzocchi Alemanni had produced. This generic model for rejuvenating
southern agriculture was applied to a territory which had come to symbolise
the southern question but which had a complex land-holding structure. It is
clear from the existing primary sources that the land reform board attempted to
expropriate and purchase the necessary land needed for the projected five rural
villages, but the holdings close to Matera were a patchwork of plots and not the
great estates found in other parts of southern Italy, e.g. the Berlingieri estate in
the Metapontino.106 When it became clear that the land needed to create viable
rural villages in Matera’s hinterland was unavailable, the concept of borghi
rurali was abandoned in favour of urban dwellings.107 The reform board’s
failure to understand the nature of land holding at Matera, however, reflects the
fact that local residents were not consulted during the implementation of the
first special law. The complex nature of land holding at Matera was
misunderstood or ignored completely. Instead development models for the
entire Mezzogiorno were applied from above to a specific economy without
taking local factors into account. This reflects the impact that notions of Matera
106
107
The Metapontino is located on the Ionian littoral. This coastal region stretches for 60
kilometres between the provinces of Taranto and Matera covering an area of 80,000
hectares. Before land reform, the Metapontino had been divided into eight different estates,
the largest of which, at Policoro, covered 6,500 hectares. The remaining land had been
owned or rented by rural workers who lived in one of the nearby inland villages. Until the
eradication of Malaria in 1950, however, the Metapontino had been largely uninhabited with
approximately 93 per cent of land used for pasture and cereal cultivation and large tracts of
woodland retained for hunting. See King, Land Reform, pp. 141-142.
See the report from the Sassi Commission meeting held on 16 October 1955 and the report
from Matera’s prefect to the Ministry of the Interior: ‘Relazione in merito all’attuazione della
Legge 17-5-1952, nr.619 per il risanamento dei rioni “Sassi” di Matera’ dated 27 February
1955. ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 82, fascicolo 662, sottofascicolo B.
193
as a symbol of the southern question generated in the immediate post-war
period had on the city’s subsequent urban and social history. A generic
economic model for the entire imagined Mezzogiorno was applied to an
individual regional case.
Furthermore, it is clear that the DC implemented a limited land reform
programme in an attempt to quell civil unrest amongst landless agricultural
workers and halt PCI gains in rural Italy. The claim that Matera’s risanamento
programme was part of a wider strategy to provide cheap labour for northern
Italian industry, however, reflects the PCI’s critique of post-war land reform and
appears to be ideologically driven.108 It implies that the DC government
engineered post-war Italy’s vast rural-to-urban migration through a limited
land reform programme. This viewpoint fails to consider the broader historical
context of Italy’s post-war economic boom and ignores the agency of those
people who chose to move to urban centres. Many Italians elected to abandon
agriculture for the lure of higher wages, the consumer world of the city, and the
idea of a better life in northern Europe and Italy’s industrial triangle. Italy’s
entry into the EEC in 1957 and the policies of the Common Market agricultural
policy, established in 1962, were additional factors behind the decline in
agricultural cultivation in southern Italy. While Dutch farmers were subsidized
by up to $700 by the European Agricultural Guarantee and Guidance Fund,
108
See for example Gerardo Chiaromonte, Agricoltura, sviluppo economico, democrazia, De
Donato, Bari, 1973. Writing in 1953 about communist propaganda regarding land reform,
the social democrat Andrea Rapisarda claimed that the PCI was spreading the idea that ‘il
governo intende trasferire i braccianti dai malsani agglomerati urbani ai villaggi rurali
soltanto per distruggerne la solidarietà di classe e trasformarli in contadini egoisti’ adding
that ‘il giudizio implica una condanna dello sfollamento dei Sassi.’ This point is notable as the
same argument would later be echoed in Tafuri’s assessment of the first special law. See
Andrea Rapisarda, ‘La riforma agraria in Lucania. Burocratici e pioneri’, Il Mondo, 14 March
1953, p. 5.
194
Italian farmers in contrast received just $70.109 As a result there was little
incentive to continue working the land for many Italians of the boom
generation. As Paul Ginsborg notes: ‘even if a proper agrarian reform had been
carried out, with widespread land redistribution on a more rational basis, with
improvement of agrarian contracts and with extensive state aid to the new
landowners, the “bone” of the rural South would still have had to shed a
significant proportion of its population.’110 Tafuri, therefore, arguably overlooks
the broader social, historical and cultural context in which Matera’s
risanamento programme was carried out when drawing up his conclusions.
The fundamental problem with Tafuri’s reading of the risanamento
programme is that he appears to have decided on his main arguments before
examining the relevant primary documents. His claim that the first special law
was a deliberate strategy to empty the Sassi, and was part of a broader DC
strategy to push agricultural workers off the land and into cities and factories,
has substituted the analysis of archival material. This oversight has been
repeated in a number of subsequent secondary sources which have uncritically
cited Tafuri’s claims. As a result the existing literature on post-war Matera has
created a narrative in which the risanamento programme’s shortcomings are
explained as the result of deliberate and methodical decisions which the DC
government made. The Manichean reading of Matera’s post-war history, in
which the PCI are the heroes and the DC the villains of the piece, is reductive
and borders on the ahistorical. This approach is deeply flawed yet surprisingly
109
110
See Ginsborg, pp. 232-233.
Ibid., p. 231
195
prevalent in the historiography of post-war Matera. In contrast, this chapter has
attempted to provide a corrective to this reductive methodology and instead
reassess Matera’s first special law through a critique of the existing secondary
material and the relevant archival sources. Primary source material suggests
that the special law’s implementation was anything but systematic. Rather it
was reactive, beset by a lack of coordination, official disagreements, the failure
to consult the local population, and ultimately waning political interest at a
national level once the Sassi’s value in terms of political propaganda had
diminished in importance. This suggests that in official circles the first special
law for Matera was more important in symbolic terms as an image of progress
for official propaganda than as an actual reform programme.
Conclusion
By the time the second special law for the Sassi was passed on 21 March 1958,
allocating a further two billion lire to the risanamento programme, an estimated
1,300 cave homes had been closed and their residents moved to new
accommodation. A brief report from October 1958 showed that 828 homes had
been built at Serra Venerdì, a further 333 at La Nera, and 257 houses at Spine
Bianche were ready to be allocated with a further 66 under construction. In
addition a total of 66 houses had been completed in the rural village Venusio
and 167 new homes had been built and allocated at La Martella.111 However, La
Martella would experience numerous problems, the Venusio project would
prove to be a failure, and the residential-village model would be abandoned in
favour of constructing additional urban quarters. As a result the risanamento
111
ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 82, fascicolo 674,
sottofascicolo 1. For more information on the construction of La Martella see Chapter 4.
196
programme would become an urban resettlement scheme. At a micro-level this
decision can be attributed to the land reform board’s failure to acquire the
necessary plots needed to create functioning agricultural villages. The rural
village model that Mazzocchi Alemanni had put forward had failed to
understand the complex nature of land holdings at Matera. This oversight
stemmed from the fact that the local population that worked the land had not
been directly consulted. As a result the initial provisions of the first special law
were based on a flawed understanding of local agriculture and were modified
accordingly once this became apparent. At a macro-level the years of Italy’s
economic miracle saw the rapid growth of urban centres and industry, social
transformation, and rural exodus. Millions of Italians chose to leave agriculture
for economic and social reasons and the issue of land reform diminished in
political importance.112 In the context of Matera this point is exemplified by the
fact that there was no official inauguration of Spine Bianche. The Sassi’s
symbolic and political currency began to fade in the years of the economic
miracle.113
Despite the numerous problems recounted above, the Christian
Democrats had used Matera’s risanamento programme to promote its post-war
reform programme in southern Italy. In the early 1950s the Sassi were
perceived in political and intellectual circles as a symbol of the southern
question which had once again become an important political issue. Tackling
Matera’s housing problems, therefore, allowed the DC to claim that it had
implemented concrete measures to resolve southern Italy’s social and economic
112
113
Between 1955 and 1971 an estimated 9 million Italians moved from one region to another
as rural-urban migration grew rapidly. See Foot, Modern Italy, p. 138 and Ginsborg, p. 219.
Pontrandolfi, p. 154
197
problems. The purpose-built rural village of La Martella was central to
government propaganda promoting the DC’s initiatives in the South. It aimed to
provide modern housing for 200 families living in the Sassi and move them
closer to the agricultural land that they worked. In official sources the project
became a symbol of the Mezzogiorno’s rebirth in the early 1950s in contrast to
the Sassi’s cave dwellings. The La Martella project, however, was beset by
numerous problems and shortcomings. The next chapter will examine La
Martella’s complex history in detail.
198
Chapter 4: La Martella: a model for southern
Italian development
Dai sassi orridi come caverne, grigi come la miseria, tristi di una angustia
angosciosa, il chiaro villaggio ‘La Martella’ – sorgente sulle pendici
collinose aperte su di una valle ricca di luce, di verde e di sole – e un
contrapporsi di fattori positivi. Tra questi due estremi di vita e quasi
simbolicamente riassunto e raffigurato il problema del Mezzogiorno.1
The village of La Martella in Basilicata became a model for southern Italian
development in the early 1950s. This purpose-built agricultural village, situated
7 kilometres from Matera, was constructed between 1951 and 1954 by the
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration-Comitato
Amministrativo Soccorso ai Senzatetto (UNRRA-CASAS) and the Sezione speciale
per la riforma fondiaria di Puglia, Lucania, Molise. 2 La Martella was originally
planned to re-house two hundred families from the Sassi. Inaugurated exactly
one year later by the Christian Democrat Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi, his
party used the project as an example of the impact that the intervento
straordinario and Marshall Plan aid had made in southern Italy. Owing to the
intellectual and media focus on the Sassi’s squalid living conditions in the late
1940s and early 1950s, Matera had been dubbed a national shame and come to
symbolize the inadequate housing conditions in post-war Italy and in particular
the Mezzogiorno. In contrast, La Martella, with its Neorealist architecture and
social-town planning designed by a team of innovative architects under the
auspices of the industrialist Adriano Olivetti, was presented as a model for
southern Italy’s socio-economic development. Images of the village were
1
2
Marroni, p. 1 (emphasis in original)
For the sake of brevity, and to avoid repetition, the Ente di riforma fondiaria Puglia e Lucania
will be referred to as the Ente di riforma, land reform board or agricultural reform board.
199
juxtaposed with those of Matera in official sources to illustrate the progress that
the DC had made in resolving the Sassi’s substandard housing conditions and by
implication the southern question. Despite the image of La Martella portrayed in
the mass media, the project failed to live up to its billing and had fallen into a
state of disrepair by the early 1960s.
There is, undoubtedly, a large body of literature on La Martella owing to
the project’s historical importance. The existing body of research on the village,
however, has primarily focused on the project in the context of political, urban
and architectural history.3 Hitherto the village’s role in promoting government
reform in the Mezzogiorno has been ignored. In particular, the depiction of La
Martella in official documentary films has been completely overlooked in the
existing literature on post-war Matera. As one of the first post-war development
projects for southern Italy to be inaugurated, La Martella was a historically
significant enterprise which played a salient role in the promotion of the Cassa
per il Mezzogiorno and agrarian reform in the mid-1950s. The village was
meant to serve as a pilot project for the rehousing of Matera’s estimated 15,000
cave dwellers which would then be replicated in other ‘depressed areas’
throughout Italy. As a result it provides an insight into the normative social
values that the DC looked to promote through its post-war southern reform
programme in the 1950s, specifically the sanctity of the family which was linked
to housing conditions. Furthermore, the existing literature on La Martella’s
3
See for example Maristella Casciato, ‘Neorealism in Italian architecture’, in Sarah Williams
Goldhagen and Réjean Legault (eds.), Anxious Modernisms. Experimentation in Postwar
Architectural Culture, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 25-53; Mauro Sàito, ‘Quaroni e la
Martella,’ in Pino Scaglione (ed.), Matera: città di architetti e architetture, Rome, 1999, pp.
17-18; Paolo Francesco Francione, La Martella. Il più bel borgo rurale d’Italia, Antezza,
Matera, 2009; Raguso, pp. 69-98; Restucci, pp. 266-272; Restucci and Tafuri, pp. 43-46;
Sacco, Matera contemporanea; Talamona, pp. 173-204; Chisena, pp. 183-190.
200
history has tended to view the DC’s southern reform programme, and in
particular land reform, as part of a systematic strategy of social control which
aimed to transform landless rural workers into small farmers dependent on the
state. La Martella is viewed as a high-profile example of this strategy in action.
This chapter will look to reassess these points drawing on previously neglected
archival sources.
In the overall context of this thesis, examining La Martella’s depiction in
official sources will shed further light on how and why Matera became a symbol
of the southern question in post-war Italy and how this concept was
appropriated for political ends. If, as the opening quotation suggests, Matera
was perceived to be emblematic of southern Italy’s economic and social
problems and La Martella as a potential antidote, analysis of the post-war
housing project should help to illuminate stereotypical perceptions of the
Mezzogiorno in political and media circles in 1950s Italy. Owing to its highprofile role in promoting the intervento straordinario, the history of the La
Martella project offers historians the opportunity to examine the concrete
effects that notions of Matera as a symbol of the southern question had on the
city’s urban and social development. For these reasons the decision was made to
include a case study of the village as a separate chapter in this research project.
The chapter will endeavour to investigate how and why representations of La
Martella were used to promote the DC’s programme of state investment and
land reform in southern Italy in the 1950s. Moreover, it will look to examine the
impact that this political and media focus had on the project’s development.
This will be carried out through the analysis of previously neglected archival
sources including official newsreels and documentaries, newspaper articles as
201
well as police and prefect reports. Notably La Martella’s residents are largely
absent from existing studies of the village. Using letters of protest and petitions
from residents found in the state archive at Matera, this chapter hopes to make a
modest contribution to including their perspectives in the village’s historical
narrative. The chapter starts with a concise history of La Martella’s planning and
construction. Second, it focuses on how the village’s inauguration was depicted
in the mass media. The third section examines images of Matera and La Martella
in documentary films produced by the Centro Documentazione in the 1950s to
promote government reform southern Italy. The fourth and final section
outlines the various problems encountered during the early years of the La
Martella project and their impact on the nascent community’s development.
4.1 A brief history of Il Borgo La Martella
La Martella was originally conceived as an UNRRA-CASAS pilot project to
rehouse 200 of the Sassi’s poorest families. In November 1950, UNRRA-CASAS
established the Commissione per l’incremento economico e sociale headed by
Guido Nadzo and Adriano Olivetti.4 The committee’s aim was to examine the
4
Guido Nadzo was an official in UNRRA-CASAS and the European Cooperation
Administration’s Housing and Public Works Italian division. For additional information on
Nadzo’s activity in Italy see Talamona, pp. 173-204. Adriano Olivetti (1901-1960) was an
industrialist, entrepreneur, urban planner, publisher and writer. He was born into a wealthy
Piedmontese family. His father’s company Olivetti manufactured electrical instruments and
later specialised in the production of typewriters. Adriano Olivetti became interested in
politics at a young age and was a contemporary of Piero Gobetti and Carlo Rosselli. In 1924
his father sent him to the US to observe the industrial methods used in the country’s leading
factories. In 1933 Olivetti became managing director of the family business and later
president of the Olivetti Company in 1938. Drawing on his interest in urban planning,
Olivetti launched a number of social housing and urban planning schemes for his company’s
employees at its plant in Ivrea. In the post-war period Olivetti combined his interest in
politics and urban planning. He founded the magazine Comunità in 1946 and re-launched the
town planning periodical Urbanistica in 1949. Moreover his publishing house Edizioni
Comunità published a number of influential works on architecture and town planning.
Olivetti became a member of the Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica in 1938 and its president
in 1950. Morever, he became a member of UNRRA-CASAS’s housing committee in 1951 and
later became the organization’s vice president in 1959. These activities were a springboard
202
socio-economic and urban conditions of a select number of ‘depressed areas’ in
detail. The results would then be used to plan building and social-assistance
programmes tailored to the socio-economic needs of each study area. UNRRACASAS received five billion lire from the European Recovery Programme (ERP)
to carry out this work. Three pilot studies were to be undertaken: an
agricultural village at La Martella; a fishing village called Porto Conte at Nurra in
Sardinia (which was never completed); and Orto Nuovo - a residential village for
artisan families at Cutro in Calabria.5 The overall aim of these projects, which
Riccardo Musatti profiled in the pages of Olivetti’s quarterly cultural and
political periodical Comunità, was to plan and construct a number of ‘borghi
residenziali dotati di tutti i servizi essenziali alla vita di una nuova comunita
autonoma ... in base a un approfondito studio delle condizioni ambientali e con
criteri informati alla piu aggiornata tecnica urbanistica e architettonica.’ 6
Rehousing 200 of the Sassi’s poorest residents at La Martella would be the first
UNRRA-CASAS project planned and carried out according to these guidelines.
Following De Gasperi’s first visit to Matera in July 1950, however, the
UNRRA-CASAS project was co-opted into the wider reform programme for the
Sassi.7 During a meeting held on 26 January 1951 between UNRRA-CASAS and
Emilio Colombo it was suggested that La Martella become part of the broader
5
6
7
for the political group Movimento Comunità that Olivetti founded in 1947, whose call for
federalism and opposition to centralism echoed the programme of the by then defunct
Action Party. For further information on Olivetti see Davide Cadeddu, Adriano Olivetti
politico, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, Rome, 2009; Valerio Ochetto, Adriano Olivetti,
Mondadori, Milan, 1985; and the essays collected in Carlo Olmo (ed.), Costruire la città
dell’uomo, Einaudi, Turin, 2001.
For a history of the UNRRA-CASAS projects at Nurra and Cutro see Talamona, pp. 187-190.
Riccardo Musatti, ‘I borghi residenziali Unrra Casas’, Comunità, (1952), no. 13, p. 44
The relationship between the Christian Democrats and UNRRA-CASAS is outlined in
Bernardi, pp. 161-201.
203
state initiative to resolve Matera’s social and economic problems.8 Negotiations
during April and May of the same year saw the Ente di riforma agree to
collaborate with UNRRA-CASAS on the La Martella project. The land reform
board agreed to make a financial contribution to the village’s construction and
maintenance as well as providing between five and six hectares of newly
expropriated agricultural land to the village’s future residents. 9 As a result the
construction of the village was organized and financed by two different bodies.
UNRRA-CASAS was responsible for the planning, financing and building of the
projected two-hundred dwellings, the kindergarten, the social centre, artisan
workshops, accommodation for the doctor and midwife, secondary roads as
well as installing the village’s internal water distribution and sewage systems.
The building costs would be covered by an ERP Counterpart Fund of 760
million. The Ente di riforma (funded by the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno), instead,
was entrusted with financing and building the parish church and rectory, the
police station, local shops (post office, tobacconist, cafe, trattoria and
guesthouse), the local council offices, the nursery, school buildings, the doctor’s
surgery, electrical power lines, the link to the Puglian Aqueduct and the village’s
main-road infrastructure. The estimated cost of this work was 225 million lire.10
8
9
10
Relazione sulla borgata di “La Martella” – Matera, National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA), UC-17 - La Martella; ARC Identifier 4319707 / MLR Number UD
1262; File Unit from Record Group 469: Records of U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 19421963; Department of State. International Cooperation Administration. Mission to Italy.
Production and Technical Assistance Division.
See letter from Gustavo Colonnetti, president of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and
technical director of UNRRA-CASAS, to Aldo Ramadoro, president of the Ente di Riforma
fondiaria Puglia e Lucania dated 9 April 1951. NARA, UC-17 - La Martella; ARC Identifier
4319707 / MLR Number UD 1262; File Unit from Record Group 469: Records of U.S. Foreign
Assistance Agencies, 1942-1963; Department of State. International Cooperation
Administration. Mission to Italy. Production and Technical Assistance Division.
See report entitled La Martella Village and Matera’s Cave Dwellers, dated 12 March 1953.
NARA; ARC Identifier 4319707 / MLR Number UD 1262; File Unit from Record Group 469:
Records of U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 1942-1963; Department of State. International
Cooperation Administration. Mission to Italy. Production and Technical Assistance Division.
204
Despite the optimistic tone of the official literature produced to promote La
Martella, the involvement of two separate bodies in the finance, construction
and maintenance of the village would later result in a number of the project’s
early problems.11
In July 1950 the Centro Studi sull’Abitazione, at the behest of UNRRACASAS, had entrusted local architect Ettore Stella and UNRRA-CASAS engineer
Gian Battista Martoglio to draw up plans for the proposed village. Following
Stella’s untimely death in February 1951 a group of Rome-based architects and
engineers, made up of Ludovico Quaroni, Piero Maria Lughi, Michele Valori,
Federico Gorio and Luigi Agati, were employed to oversee La Martella’s design. 12
A site seven kilometres outside Matera had been identified for the proposed
village and was approved by UNRRA-CASAS on 16 February 1951. The location
was chosen in an attempt to create an autonomous community still linked to
Matera. The village was to be situated equidistant from the provincial capital on
agricultural land redistributed by the reform board. The aim of this initiative
was to reduce the hours that Matera’s agricultural workers spent travelling to
and from their workplace and thus increase agricultural productivity.13
As outlined in Chapter 3, the idea of building agricultural villages to
house the Sassi’s inhabitants had been put forward in an ECA financed report
11
12
13
See in particular the booklet produced by the Mutual Security Agency (the renamed
Economic Cooperation Act which administered Marshall Plan funding) entitled Il villaggio La
Martella to mark La Martella’s inauguration. The pamphlet outlined details of the village’s
planning, finance and construction and hailed the project as evidence of cooperation
between UNRRA-CASAS and the land reform board.
See Relazione sulla borgata di “La Martella” – Matera, National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA), UC-17 - La Martella; ARC Identifier 4319707 / MLR Number UD
1262; File Unit from Record Group 469: Records of U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 19421963; Department of State. International Cooperation Administration. Mission to Italy.
Production and Technical Assistance Division.
Quaroni’s presentation ‘Il borgo La Martella visto dal capo dei progettisti’ to the Italian
Camera di commercio is reproduced in Antonio Terranova, Ludovico Quaroni: La città fisica,
Laterza, Rome, 1981, pp. 57-63.
205
from 1950 for the Basento Valley land-reclamation syndicate.14 The study
highlighted the long distances travelled by the Sassi’s smallholders and landless
workers to and from agricultural land in Matera’s hinterland. Instead the report
recommended transferring the estimated 1,100 day labourers and 1,000 small
landowners that lived in the Sassi to purpose-built rural villages closer to the
land that they worked. The remaining 900 artisan families would be re-housed
in specially-built residential districts close to Matera’s urban centre. 15 Despite
pressure from the Ente di riforma to build individual farmhouses instead of the
centralized agricultural villages favoured by UNRRA-CASAS, the decision was
made to go with the latter in an attempt to maintain the Sassi’s social ties. 16
Quaroni and his colleagues based their design on the findings of the
Commissione per lo studio della città dell’agro di Matera carried out by Friedrich
Friedmann and his team of researchers in 1951.17 An attempt was made to
recreate the collectivity of the Sassi on a social level in La Martella’s architecture
and layout. Speaking about the design of La Martella, Quaroni noted it aimed to
produce ‘una articolazione di superfici, volumi e colori in qualche modo non
costituire un trauma per chi aveva abbandonato, con le miserie igieniche, la
felice qualita plastica dei Sassi e la sua disponibilita alla vita associata degli
abitanti.’18 The village was designed with curved streets which coalesced in a
town centre situated at the top of a hill. Provision was also made in La Martella’s
plans to build communal ovens on each street echoing one of the Sassi’s
14
15
16
17
18
Mazzocchi Alemanni and Calia’s report is examined in Chapter 3 of this thesis. See section
3.1.
See Nallo Mazzocchi Alemanni and Enzo Calia, Il problema dei Sassi di Matera, Consorzio di
bonifica della Media Valle del Bradano, 1950, pp. 4-8.
Terranova, p. 58
See section 3.4 in Chapter 3 for further information on the work of Friedmann and his team.
Terranova, p. 59
206
distinctive social and urban features. La Martella’s urban design was influenced
by Adriano Olivetti who sought to develop ‘un modello di sviluppo urbanistico
capace di far convivere le nuove scienze del territorio con l’attenzione al
progresso e alla qualita della vita del singolo e della comunita.’ 19 This
philosophy was based on the industrialist’s admiration for the Tennessee Valley
Authority which had promoted the democratic participation of the people
affected in its development programmes at a grass-roots level.20
During the planning stages residents of Matera’s cave dwellings were
asked to choose their preferred house design from three available possibilities.
The winning design was then subdivided into two categories: semi-detached
houses for agricultural workers and distinct houses for artisans. The first
category featured a kitchen-dining area, three bedrooms, a bathroom, a
washroom, a storeroom, a barn, a hen-house, and a shed for a horse-drawn cart.
Notably a small surveillance point, accessible from inside the main structure,
was built beside each barn. It was large enough for a bed and had a hole in the
wall at head height. The aim of this feature was to allow residents, who had
hitherto housed their animals in their homes, to guard against potential
rustling. The artisan houses were almost identical in design but had a workshop
instead of a barn. Moreover, each house had a courtyard as well as an allotment
of 750 metres squared.21
Construction of La Martella’s road infrastructure started in September
19
20
21
Pippo Ciorra, Ludovico Quaroni 1911-1987, Electa, Milano, 1989, p. 105
Casciato, p. 38. For a discussion of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s philosophy see Ekbladh,
pp. 335-374.
See Relazione per S.E. Il Ministro dei LL.PP. sul Borgo La Martella in agro di Matera, 20 March
1952, NARA, UC-17 - La Martella; ARC Identifier 4319707 / MLR Number UD 1262; File Unit
from Record Group 469: Records of U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 1942-1963;
Department of State. International Cooperation Administration. Mission to Italy. Production
and Technical Assistance Division. For a detailed discussion of La Martella’s architecture see
Raguso, pp. 77-88.
207
1951 with the building of the first one-hundred houses getting underway in July
of the same year. Pietro Campilli (Minister of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno),
local DC leader Emilio Colombo, and Leland Burrows (vice-president of the ECA
in Italy) officially inaugurated work on the village on 9 September 1951 - seven
months before the enactment of the Special Law for the Sassi. The image of La
Martella as a model for southern Italy’s future development was already present
in press coverage of this event. In the official government press release to ANSA
dated 8 September 1951, the laying of the first stone at La Martella was
described as the start of ‘un programma di lavori di grande importanza per il
risollevamento delle popolazioni agricole meno abbienti del Mezzogiorno.’ 22 By
December 1952 the village’s road network was complete while a number of
public buildings, including the cinema and the church, as well as the first batch
of houses, were built in the summer of 1953.23 Despite the fact that only fortynine houses had been completed and the construction of a number of important
public buildings had yet to start, De Gasperi inaugurated La Martella on 17 May
1953. The Italian Prime Minister handed over the keys to the village’s first
inhabitants in a public ceremony preceded by the formal ‘closing’ of their
troglodyte homes. Later De Gasperi addressed approximately 30,000 people at
an election rally held in Matera’s Piazza Vittorio Veneto. These two events
played an important role in the promotion of the government’s southern reform
22
23
See ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo
675, sottofascicolo 14. The story was covered in a number of newspapers which adopted a
similar tone and message: Luigi Limongelli, ‘Il risanamento di Matera si associa alle
redenzione delle campagne Lucane’, Il Popolo, 11 September 1951, p. 12; Marroni, pp. 1 & 3;
and Gino Spera, ‘Ritorno alla vita civile’, Il Mattino, 10 September, 1951, p. 1. Moreover, an
official booklet outlining the scope and location of the project was produced to mark the
inauguration of work on La Martella. See Ente per lo sviluppo della irrigazione e la
trasformazione fondiaria in Puglia e Lucania, Borgata Rurale La Martella. Per il risanamento
dei Sassi di Matera, Laterza, Bari, 1951.
Friedmann, Miseria e dignità, p. 74
208
programme ahead of the general election on 7 June 1953.24 The next section will
examine the depiction of De Gasperi’s election rally and La Martella’s
inauguration in the national media focusing on how and why the image of La
Martella was used to promote the DC’s reform policies in southern Italy.
4.2 La Martella in official sources
De Gasperi’s visit to Matera in 1953 received widespread coverage in the Italian
national media and represents a high-profile moment when Matera was the
focus of political and press attention. The examination of these media sources is
crucial to understanding the role that Matera and La Martella played in
promoting the Christian Democrats’ twin reform programme for southern Italy.
The historian and journalist Leonardo Sacco has argued that De Gasperi’s
involvement with the La Martella project was in fact minimal and that the DC
took undue credit for a project that UNRRA-CASAS had pioneered.25 While De
Gasperi and the DC may indeed have had a limited role in the planning and
construction of La Martella as Sacco suggests, the Italian Prime Minister’s visit
was a key moment in promoting the project nationally and internationally and
his name would become indelibly linked to the village.26 The fact that De
24
25
26
Interviewed in 1993 the former ECA official Vincent Barnett claimed that La Martella had
been built ‘partly for the symbolism of it, you know. The revivification [and] the renaissance
of the South were bringing people out of their caves and into modern cities.’ This suggests
that the La Martella project played a significant role in terms of official propaganda
promoting reforms in southern Italy. Interview by Eric Christenson and Linda Christenson
with Dr. Vincent Barnett (European Cooperation Administration Program Chief Italy),
August 19 1993.
Interview by author with Leonardo Sacco on 20 November 2011.
A plaque placed outside La Martella’s post office and dedicated to De Gasperi was unveiled
during a public ceremony presided over by Emilio Colombo and Aldo Ramadoro, head of the
land reform board, on 5 September 1954. The plaque’s text attributes the village’s
construction to the recently deceased DC leader and featured no mention of UNRRA-CASAS’s
role in the project: ‘Ad Alcide De Gasperi, Eminente statista, ricostruttore dell’Italia artefice
di questo solatio borgo sorto dal buio dei Sassi i Martellesi qui lo ricordano grande italiano e
credente in Cristo in perenne riconoscenza della sua opera di civiltà cristiana esempio e
209
Gasperi chose to inaugurate La Martella, notwithstanding the fact that the
village had begun its life as an UNRRA-CASAS initiative, suggests that the project
was perceived to be of national significance in the promotion of the DC’s
southern reform programme.
La Martella was officially opened on 17 May 1953 in the run up to the
general election held one month later. The choice of date for the inauguration
ceremony was not casual as the special law for the Sassi had been passed
exactly one year earlier. De Gasperi returned to Matera, however, in what was
one of the lowest points of his political career. The DC had seen its support fall
significantly from 48.5 per cent of the polls in the 1948 general election to 35.1
per cent in the local elections of 1951-1952. At an international level De Gasperi
was dealing with the question of Trieste, while in domestic politics the Italian
prime minister had come under fire from the opposition and some members of
his own party for the enactment of the so-called legge truffa on 13 March 1953.
This change in electoral law meant that 65 per cent of parliamentary seats
would be allocated to any party that obtained over 50 per cent of votes.27 Local
opposition to the legge truffa in the Province of Matera manifested itself in
strikes by braccianti affiliated to the CIGL and the PCI between December 1952
and January 1953. On 5 January 1953 over 2,000 people in the town of Irsina in
the Province of Matera marched behind a banner which read Abassa il Governo,
Abassa De Gasperi, Non vogliamo la riforma della legge elettorale. Police used
tear gas and fired shots to break up the demonstration. Scuffles between the
authorities and protestors left a number of people injured including several
27
guida ai governanti e ai popoli.’ The event was covered in the land reform board’s monthly
publication for assignees Vita Contadina, October 1954, p. 5.
Ginsborg, p. 143
210
carabinieri.28 Opposition to the legge truffa, however, was not restricted to the
PCI stronghold of Irsina. A letter from the Prefect of Matera to the Italian
Ministry of the Interior, dated 30 March 1953, noted that 240 of the 605
workers employed on the construction of La Martella had held a 30 minute
strike in protest against the new electoral law earlier the same day. 29
The Christian Democrats had suffered disastrous results in the local
elections of 1951-1952 where its share of votes in southern Italy had dropped
from the 48.5 per cent of 1948 to 30.3 per cent.30 Togliatti had also accused De
Gasperi and his party of neglecting to finish the numerous public works projects
undertaken since the establishment of the southern development programme in
1950 claiming that: ‘avete [the DC] abbandonato la val d’Agri e andate in giro
posando dappertutto la prima pietra ma senza mai ultimare i lavori.’ 31 Thus, the
Italian Prime Minister’s visit to Matera to inaugurate La Martella provided the
ideal opportunity to respond to Togliatti’s accusations. By tackling the much
publicised problem of the Sassi through the construction of a purpose-built
agricultural village, the DC could claim to be addressing the longstanding and
broader problem of the questione meridionale. La Martella’s inauguration,
28
29
30
31
For accounts of the widespread popular protest against the legge truffa in the Province of
Matera see the various police reports dated from December 1952 to April 1953, in ASM,
Prefettura, Affari di gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 134, fascicolo 1147, sottofascicolo 3,
Provincia di Matera, elezioni politiche, Discussione alle Camere della nuova legge elettorale e
manifestazioni di protesta contro la nuova legge. The same file contains a rich amount of
documentation on the protest at Irsina including details of charges later brought against 36
protestors.
See letter dated 30 March 1953, in ASM, Prefettura, Affari di gabinetto (Ricovero 1990),
busta 134, fascicolo 1147, sottofascicolo 3, Provincia di Matera, elezioni politiche,
Discussione alle Camere della nuova legge elettorale e manifestazioni di protesta contro la
nuova legge.
For information on the local elections of 1951-1952 see Ginsborg, pp. 141-143. The
immediacy of the Trieste question is underlined by the headline in the Communist daily
L’Unità the day after De Gasperi’s visit to Matera: ‘Tracotanti affermazioni di Tito “l’Italia non
avrà mai Trieste”’, L’Unità 18 May 1953, p. 8.
Togliatti’s quote is reproduced in Raffaele Nigro, ‘Che Sud Fa: Ecco De Gasperi in Basilicata’,
La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 11 February 2005, p. 1.
211
therefore, was used to promote the work of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno and
the land reform board with the aim of winning back the votes lost in southern
Italy at the local elections of 1951-1952 prior to the upcoming general election
in June 1953.
Official sources covering De Gasperi’s second visit to Matera presented
the event as a triumphant return. Three years on from his first visit to the city
the Italian Prime Minister had kept his promise about resolving the questione
materana. These themes are found in La Settimana INCOM’s newsreel Panorama
pre-elettorale. De Gasperi a Matera. Meda a Milano. Bonomi a Frosinone which
covers De Gasperi’s pre-election rally at Matera.32 The opening shot is a
panorama of a packed Piazza Vittorio Veneto (Matera’s main square). The crowd
hold banners in support of De Gasperi and the Christian Democrats. The voiceover informs the viewer that the assembled crowd: ‘Applaudano al presente e
all’avvenire. Oggi De Gasperi ha chiuso i primi Sassi. Ha assegnato le prime 50
case del borgo La Martella.’33 An image of children cheering and applauding cuts
to a mid-shot of De Gasperi standing on a stage under the banner: ‘Democrazia
Cristiana: al servizio dell’Italia. A Matera si inizia il miracolo del superamento
delle zone depresse’. This shot cuts to a montage of crowd scenes and close-ups
in which De Gasperi speaks to the assembled audience. The voice-over
summarises the salient points of the Italian Prime Minister’s speech: ‘Tutti i
comuni della Lucania, dice, adesso avranno acqua e fognature. Sono stati spesi
47 miliardi in sette anni. Noi non formuliamo promesse mirabolanti.
32
33
For the history and dissemination of official newsreels and documentaries see section 4.3
below.
Panorama pre-elettorale. De Gasperi a Matera. Meda a Milano. Bonomi a Frosinone (Italy,
1953).
212
Promettiamo cose di cui prevediamo la soluzione.’ 34 Produced in the context of
the forthcoming general election, the newsreel’s rhetorical message is explicit:
the Christian Democrats are the party that deliver concrete solutions to Italy’s
post-war problems. The transfer of 50 families from the Sassi to La Martella was
used in official sources to illustrate this point.
Coverage of De Gasperi’s visit to Matera and La Martella in the Christian
Democrat organ Il Popolo adopted a similar structure to the newsreel footage
examined above. Two distinct images of the South were juxtaposed: the
impoverished, backward and primitive Mezzogiorno of the Liberal and Fascist
eras and the rapidly developing post-war South of the Christian Democrats.
These two concepts were represented by the Sassi and La Martella respectively.
Similar to their description in Carlo Levi’s Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, Il Popolo
depicted the Sassi as Other to ideas of modernity. Matera’s iconic cave dwellings
were presented as an embarrassing monument to the Italian state’s persistent
neglect of southern Italy. Sixteen thousand men, women and children, it was
claimed, were still residing in prehistoric conditions at the end of the Fascist
ventennio. Families lived and died in cavernous homes which they were forced
to share with their livestock.35 In contrast to past failures Il Popolo presented De
Gasperi as ‘il salvatore del Mezzogiorno’ who ‘con un colpo solo ha cancellato un
antico oblio vergognoso.’36 By closing a number of Sassi and rehousing the
residents in new accommodation, the Christian Democrat newspaper claimed
34
35
36
Ibid.
‘Per tanti secoli il popolo di Matera ha accumulato meste giornate all’insegna della
sofferenza e dell’inedia; per venti anni, durante la dittatura, dei “sassi” non si parlò agli
italiani; essi ignorano che a Matera era sopravissuto un frammento dell’età paleolitica e che
16 mila uomini donne e bambini con le mule e le loro casse ad un passo del letto, vivevano e
morivano in buchi scavati nella roccia viva, come i nostri antenati nelle epoche tramandate
dalla leggenda.’ Sandro Bevilacqua, ‘Il borgo “La Martella” ha accolto i primi abitanti’, Il
Popolo, 18 May 1953, p. 1.
Ibid., p. 1
213
that De Gasperi was tackling a national shame which no previous Italian
government had been able to resolve.37 La Martella’s inauguration was
portrayed as the first step in this process; it was presented as a concrete
example of the government maintaining its election promises. 38
Despite the fact that La Martella was incomplete on 17 May 1953, Il
Popolo presented the project as a model-agricultural village and prototype for
southern Italy’s future development. First, the article noted that the nascent
community was served by a specially-built road network and water
infrastructure.39 Second, the feature underlined that the new villagers were
involved in the selection of what kind of housing had been built. In contrast to
the Sassi’s inhospitable cave dwellings, the houses at La Martella were
described as the epitome of a modern home complete with, amongst other
features, three bedrooms, a dining room, a bathroom and an allotment.40 Third,
the village was furnished with the essential public services needed in a
functioning rural community: municipal buildings, a church, a post office, a
37
38
39
40
‘Traducendo in realtà di azione politica e sociale una legge provvidenziale, il presidente del
consiglio De Gasperi ha assistito alla chiusura delle prime grotte dei “sassi”, una piaga
sinistramente famosa di questa città ed ha solennemente riaffermato l’impegno preso nel
luglio 1950: l’opera di risanamento di una delle zone più infelici della penisola, abbandonata
per secoli ad un destino di tristezza e di miseria, di disperazione e di morte, come appare in
un celebre racconto, continuerà gigantesca e appassionata.’ Ibid., p. 1
The coverage of De Gaperi’s inauguration of La Martella was mirrored in the weekly
newspaper Il Giornale del Mezzogiorno as well as the monthly magazine Vita contadina in
Puglia, Lucania e Molise. Both publications present Matera and La Martella as symbols of the
past and the future of southern Italy respectively. Moreover, La Martella’s inauguration is
used as an example of the Christian Democrat government maintaining its promises. See
Giacomo Etna, ‘Da Eboli Cristo riprende la Marcia’, Il Giornale del Mezzogiorno, 25 May 1953,
pp. 2 & 4 and Vita contadina in Puglia, Lucania e Molise, June 1953, pp. 8-9. Unfortunately
distribution figures for both publications have not been forthcoming. La Martella’s
inauguration was also covered in the English press which echoed the Italian coverage cited
above. See ‘New Village for Cave Dwellers. Signor De Gasperi in South Italy’, The Times, 18
May 1953, p. 6 and ‘Rehousing Italy’s Cave-Dwellers. Government’s Land Reform in South’,
The Manchester Guardian, 19 May 1953, p. 7.
‘Questo borgo sorge su una altura al nord della strada Matera-Timmari. Ottimi collegamenti
stradali lo allacciano alla rotabile già e con la comunale Gravina-Matera: è allacciato alla rete
idrica dell’acquedotto pugliese ed alla rete della Società Lucana per le imprese
idroelettriche.’ Sandro Bevilacqua, ‘Il borgo “La Martella”’, p. 1
Ibid., p. 1
214
police station, a nursery, an elementary school, a vocational training workshop,
a social assistance office, agricultural warehouses, and a general store.41 Finally,
La Martella’s description in Il Popolo made it clear that the village’s construction
was a direct result of cooperation between the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, the
agricultural reform board and UNRRA-CASAS, i.e. the Christian Democrat
government and US financial assistance. 42
During his speech at Matera, De Gasperi highlighted the importance of
ERP funds to government reform in southern Italy. The Italian Prime Minister
noted that ‘gli aiuti americani hanno contribuito alla risoluzione di molti
problemi.’43 In the context of the upcoming election, however, the DC leader
underlined that this investment would dry up if Italy changed sides in the Cold
War: ‘non si puo abbandonare la collaborazione politica internazionale, se non
rinunciando ad una cooperazione soprattutto finanziaria ed economica.’ 44 While
the DC presented itself as the party which continued to deliver reform in
southern Italy, in contrast, the opposition parties on both the Left and the Right
were described as obstacles to the Mezzogiorno’s continued development: ‘Non
solo dall’estrema sinistra, ma anche dalla destra, si tenta di rallentare lo sforzo
di ricostruzione, di rinascita: questo e un tradimento e chi lo compie ne dovra
41
42
43
44
‘Nel borgo – esso realizza una delle più superbe imprese del Governo democratico nel campo
sociale e porta una luce di speranza in tante vite finora sgomente da un’inguaribile tristezza
– trovano sede la delegazione comunale, la chiesa canonica, l’ufficio postale, la caserma dei
carabinieri, l’asilo-nido e quello infantile, la scuola elementare, i laboratori per l’istruzione
professionale, il centro per l’assistenza sociale, il centro aziendale con silos e magazzini, il
centro zootecnico, l’autorimessa con officina, le botteghe artigiane e i negozi di prima
necessità.’ Ibid., p. 1
‘Il borgo della Martella – è una vera e propria cittadina innalzata con fondi dello stato con
una spesa di miliardi – è stato realizzato con finanziamenti della Cassa per il Mezzogiorno,
tramite l’Ente di Riforma Puglia e Lucania per gli edifici pubblici, e con finanziamenti
dell’Unrra-Casas per le abitazioni.’ Ibid., p. 1
Ibid., p. 1
Ibid., p. 1
215
pagare le conseguenze.’45 In the context of the coming election and the onset of
the Cold War, therefore, Matera and La Martella were used as symbols of the
Mezzogiorno’s past and the future. Through the depiction of the village’s
inauguration the Christian Democrat leadership looked to communicate the
message that it was delivering a concrete answer to the southern question.
Furthermore, this solution was being achieved through the combined efforts of
government reform and the ERP.46
Predictably the Communist daily L’Unità offered a conflicting account of
La Martella’s inauguration and De Gasperi’s pre-election rally at Matera. In
contrast to the triumphalism found in official sources, Giorgio Amendola’s frontpage article, ‘Un inutile viaggio elettorale’ provided the Communist Party with
the opportunity to launch a counter-offensive against Christian Democrat
propaganda.47 The coverage of La Martella’s inauguration suggests that the
village was of political importance in the context of the upcoming general
election. L’Unità accused the DC of using public money to stage manage the
election rally at Matera. The article claimed that employees of the Cassa per il
45
46
47
‘Testimonianza di fraternità nazionale per le popolazioni dei “Sassi” lucani’, Il Popolo, 18 May
1953, p. 1
A monthly report from the chief of the local carabiniere, Salvatore Auriemma, to the Prefect
of Matera dated 27 May 1953 suggests that the official propaganda campaign surrounding La
Martella’s inauguration had an immediate impact at a local level in the build up to the
general election of the same year: ‘Il partito democratico cristiano ha particolarmente
sfruttato come propagandistico l’inaugurazione del nuovo borgo rurale “La Martella” nel
comune di Matera, destinato ad accogliere una parte degli abitanti dei Sassi. L’inaugurazione
ha avuto luogo il giorno 17 alla presenza del Presidente del Consiglio On/le De Gasperi. Con
un grande comizio cui hanno partecipato circa 30 mila persone il succitato partito ha dato
prova di aver raggiunta una solida organizzazione capillare e di essersi creato un notevole
seguito in seno alla classe contadina. L’inaugurazione del nuovo borgo “La Martella”, nonché
l’assicurazione che con la costituzione di altri villaggi rurali troveranno comoda e dignitosa
abitazione gran parte delle famiglie che in atto alloggiano nelle “grotte” di Matera, famiglie
che oltre la casa avranno anche terra ed assistenza, hanno segnato un punto non
indifferente, ai fini elettorali, a favore della democrazia cristiana, in seno alla classe
interessata.’ ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 82,
fascicolo 669, sottofascicolo M, Risanamento dei Sassi. Legge 17 maggio 1952, n. 619: Varie.
Giorgio Amendola, ‘Un inutile viaggio elettorale’, L’Unità, 22 May 1953, p. 1
216
Mezzogiorno, under orders from their superiors, were ferried to Matera in
trucks. Moreover, it alleged that the local prefect, police chief and state
functionaries had been mobilised to organise the Christian Democrats’ day of
pre-electoral propaganda.48
However, according to Amendola, these efforts had been rendered
ineffective by the village’s incomplete state. In contrast to official sources,
L’Unità presented a negative image of La Martella. Rather than a model for
southern development, it was argued, the village illustrated the failure of the
government’s reform programme. The PCI organ reported that De Gasperi was
meant to inaugurate ‘la piu grande opera del regime del Mezzogiorno, l’unica
portata a termine in cinque anni.’49 La Martella was billed in official sources as
the first step in tackling the national shame embodied by the Sassi and by
implication the southern question. Instead, Amendola stated, the Italian Prime
Minister had handed over the keys to ‘22 casette di tufo mal costruite’ while
3,000 families remained living in Matera’s cave dwellings. 50 The article argued
that the government could not even take credit for these hastily constructed
buildings as they had been paid for by UNRRA-CASAS and not the 5 billion lire
allocated under the special law for the Sassi. The implication was that rather
than being a project to celebrate, La Martella embodied the government’s failure
to tackle a national shame.51
The failure to complete the La Martella project, as well as delays in
48
49
50
51
Ibid., p. 1
Ibid., p. 1 (italics appear in original text)
Ibid., p. 1
‘A Matera, dove più severo si leva dal Sasso l’atto di accusa del popolo meridionale contro i
governi e le vecchie classi dirigenti, responsabili di quella e di altre vergogne, a Matera erano
stati concentrati i massimi sforzi del governo dell’on. De Gasperi, che aveva assunto
personalmente un “impegno d’onore”.’ Ibid. p. 1
217
constructing the additional rural villages and residential neighbourhoods
proposed under the provisions of the special law for Matera, were blamed on
the government’s southern reform programme. Amendola criticised the Cassa
per il Mezzogiorno for wasting money and corrupting local politics. It was, he
argued, ‘un nuovo cancro della vita meridionale, centro di speculazioni e di
corruzione.’52 Moreover, the agricultural reform authorities were branded ‘nuovi
esosi padroni, che agiscono contro i contadini assegnatari con tutto un pesante e
costoso apparato burocratico.’53 The unfinished village of La Martella, according
to Amendola, exemplified the failings of these two reform bodies. 54 Thus,
L’Unità’s 500,000 readers were presented with a negative image of La Martella
in the run up to the general election on 7 June 1953. In contrast to the official
image of the purpose-built rural village as the future of Mezzogiorno, the PCI
daily depicted a project which embodied the government’s failure to resolve the
problem of the Sassi and by implication the southern question.55
Communist Party complaints about the failure to complete La Martella in
time for its ceremonial opening were fully justified. As noted above just fortynine of the projected two-hundred houses were completed in time for De
Gasperi’s visit and a number of public buildings had yet to be started. The PCI’s
interest in La Martella, however, needs to be seen in the context of the upcoming
general election and its accompanying propaganda campaign. Arguably the
project was at too early a stage to be condemned to failure. The Communist
52
53
54
55
Ibid., p. 1
Ibid., p. 1
‘I risultati di questi metodi si sono potuti ammirare a Matera. Su questi metodi, sul modo
come viene speso dalla Cassa e dagli Enti il pubblico denaro, dovrà essere fatta luce al più
presto, per indicare e colpire i responsabili.’ Ibid., p. 1
The Giornale d’Italia attacked Amendola’s article in an editorial entitle ‘Rapaci nel cielo del
Sud’. The article branded Amendola a liar and accused him of presenting misleading facts
ahead of the general election. ‘Rapaci nel cielo del Sud’, Giornale d’Italia, 25 May 1953, p. 1.
218
Party’s relative silence on subsequent difficulties that the new-born community
faced (which are examined in detail below) suggests that Amendola’s criticism
of La Martella reflected a predictable attempt to win votes in the forthcoming
election rather than a deep concern for the welfare and long-term development
of a project for which his party had ultimately, albeit reluctantly, voted in favour.
Thus Matera and La Martella became sites of political contest between the DC
and PCI in the lead-up to the general election of 1953. Both parties used Matera
as a symbol of the southern question in their pre-electoral propaganda. The
Christian Democrats presented La Martella as the first step in resolving
southern Italy’s economic and social problems. Conversely, for the Communist
party the purpose-built village embodied the shortcomings of the government’s
southern reform programme. It was DC rhetoric, unsurprisingly, which
dominated representations of La Martella in government commissioned
documentaries in the 1950s. The Sassi were presented as a symbol of the
southern question and a national shame while La Martella, in contrast,
embodied the impact that the government’s reform programme had made in
southern Italy. Furthermore, as one of the first new villages to be completed in
the context of land reform, documentary footage depicting La Martella provided
an opportunity to present the social values that the Christian Democrats looked
to promote in the mid-1950s, in particular the sanctity of the home and the
Christian family. The next section will examine this official documentary footage
in detail.
4.3 Matera and La Martella in Centro Documentazione
films
219
Alcide De Gasperi established the Centro di documentazione della Presidenza
del consiglio dei ministri della Repubblica italiana in 1951. It was headed by
Gastone Silvano Spinetti who had worked in the Fascist government press office
before moving on to the Ministero della Cultura Popolare. The primary role of
the Centro Documentazione according to Spinetti was ‘to document and
disseminate, both at home and abroad, information on activities of the public
administration, with a special focus on reconstruction.’56 Visual media was the
Centro Documentazione’s preferred method for achieving these aims. It
produced an illustrated magazine entitled Documenti di vita italiana while the
photographic and film department produced posters, photos as well as
newsreels and documentaries. The Centro Documentazione commissioned
approximately 200 short films and documentaries during its nine-year lifespan
from private production companies including Documento Film, Astra, Orizzonte
Cinematografico, Atlante, Gamma, the reconstituted Istituto Luce and La
Settimana INCOM.57 In order to ensure the dissemination of government
documentaries throughout the peninsula, the Centro Documentazione issued a
number of directives: official documentaries and newsreels had to be shown
during the interval at feature films; production companies had to inform
56
57
Quoted in Maria Adelaide Frabotta, ‘Government Propaganda: Official Newsreels and
Documentaries in the 1950s’, in Luciano Cheles and Lucio Sponza (eds.), The Art of
Persuasion. Political Communication in Italy from 1945 to the 1990s, Manchester University
Press, Manchester, 2001, p. 51. Unfortunately a large number of the files covering the
activities of the Centro Documentazione listed in the inventory of the Archivio Centrale dello
Stato in Rome have been misplaced. However, an English-language magazine from May 1951
entitled Italian Affairs and an Italian-language magazine entitled L’Italia del popolo were
located. Both magazines looked to publicize the Italian government’s post-war
reconstruction efforts. See ACS, MI, Gabinetto, fasc. permanenti, Atti, Enti e Associazioni,
busta 29 - 1, fasc. 879 E/1.
Paola Bonifazio, ‘Work, Welfare, Bio-Politics: Italian and American Film Propaganda of the
Reconstruction in the Age of Neorealism’, The Italianist, (2011), no. 31, p.157. For a
comprehensive study of Centro Documentazione produced films see Bonifazio, Narrating
Modernization; and Maria Adelaide Frabotta, Il governo filma l’Italia, Bulzoni editore, Rome,
2002.
220
regional press offices of when and where newsreels were projected on a weekly
basis; and official films were to be shown for a period of at least four days. With
the number of cinemas in Italy rising from 14,676 in October 1952 to 15,500 in
September 1953 cinematic images were more widely disseminated in Italy in
the 1950s than ever before.58 Moreover, Centro Documentazione films were
shown throughout the peninsula and islands via mobile cinema trucks. A 1956
communique from the Ministry of the Interior to various prefects noted that the
aim of the cinemobili was to ‘proiettare ogni sera gratuitamente documentari di
attualita sull’opera di ricostruzione realizzata dal Governo nel dopoguerra e
cortometraggi di varieta nelle varie localita d’Italia.’59 The importance of film as
a medium of communication in a country with an illiteracy rate of 12.9 per cent
in 1951 is summed up by Domenico Paolella, editor in chief and director of La
Settimana INCOM: ‘In those days [the immediate post-war period] our
newsreels represented the only audiovisual medium that showed Italians what
was going on, given that television only started in 1954.’60 Therefore official
newsreels and documentaries received wide circulation at a popular level
during the scope of this study.
Centro Documentazione films and newsreels focused on Italy’s post-war
reconstruction and emphasized the role that government reform and foreign aid
played in this process. Although they were produced in the same historical
58
59
60
Frabotta, ‘Government Propaganda’, p. 52
For details of the activities of Centro Documentazione mobile cinemas in 1956 see ACS, MI,
Gabinetto, fasc. permanenti, Atti, Enti e Associazioni, busta 289, fascicolo 879/E. Moreover,
documents found in the Archivio Sturzo in Rome reveal that in 1953 the DC’s propaganda
office came to an agreement with Universal Films and Metro Goldwyn Mayer which allowed
American feature films to be shown in local party headquarters and via its mobile cinema
units in an attempt to attract more people to see DC propaganda films. See Archivio Storico
dell’Istituto Luigi Sturzo (ASILS), Fondo Democrazia Cristiana (FDC), Segreteria politica, Atti
dei segretari, 5, Guido Gonella, Uffici centrali, Circolari, scatola 11, fascicolo 13, Spes (1953).
Frabotta, ‘Government Propaganda’, p. 5. For Italian literacy rates in the 1950s see Ginsborg,
p. 440.
221
context as so-called Italian Neorealist cinema, the government sponsored films
were diametrically opposed in style, tone and narrative structure to the works
of, for example, De Sica, De Santis and Germi.61 While Neorealism focused on the
uncertainties, difficulties and frustrations of a country in the aftermath of the
Second World War and over twenty years of Fascist rule, the Centro
Documentazione, in contrast, focused on reconstruction, economic growth and
productivity. Consequently, the Centro Documentazione reduced the
complexities of post-war Italy to images which eschewed the perceived
verisimilitude of Neorealism, instead offering a more positive view of the
present and an optimistic vision of the country’s future.62
The British documentary tradition had a notable impact on the style,
tone and narrative structure of Italian post-war reconstruction
documentaries.63 The state- and commercially-sponsored British documentary
movement roughly spanned the period 1929-1952 and produced over one
thousand films. It was pioneered and heavily influenced by the Scottish
filmmaker John Grierson. Grierson, who produced films for the Empire
Marketing Board, the General Post Office, and later the British Ministry of
Information during the Second World War, famously declared that: ‘I look on
61
62
63
Pierre Sorlin, ‘“La Settimana INCOM” messaggera del futuro: verso la società dei consumi’, in
Augusto Sainati (ed.), La Settimana INCOM. Cinegiornali e informazione negli anni ‘50,
Edizioni Lindau, Turin, 2002, p. 76. Notably Paola Bonifazio has identified the similarity of
social situations and characters in a number of prominent neorealist films and government
documentaries. She convincingly argues that the Centro Documentazione appears to have
reacted to social issues addressed in Italian post-war cinema. However, in contrast to the
bleak tone and lack of narrative resolution in many so-called neorealist films, the official
documentaries have happy endings and reflect the values of reconstruction: hope for the
future and employment. Italy’s social and economic problems are resolved thanks to
government intervention and foreign financial aid. See Bonifazio, ‘Work, Welfare, BioPolitics’, pp. 155-180.
Pierre Sorlin, Italian National Cinema, Routledge, London, 1996, p. 86
Bonifazio, ‘Work, Welfare, Bio-Politics’, pp. 157-158
222
cinema as a pulpit and use it as a propagandist.’64 He believed that propaganda
films were an essential tool for engaging and educating the wider public in a
functioning mass democracy, and his theories on the role that governmentsponsored documentary films could play in instructing and informing
democratic citizens were translated into Italian in the early post-war period.65
Furthermore, the narrative structure of Griersonian documentaries appears to
have influenced Centro Documentazione productions. The Griersonian
documentary featured what Brian Winston has dubbed a ‘problem moment’ at
the heart of its narrative; the social problem highlighted could be resolved if
‘society is given over to the enlightened managers of industry and the experts in
government.’66 As a result, Griersonian documentaries replaced in-depth
analysis of social problems with a deus-ex-macchina resolution to the problems
highlighted. Moreover, they communicated the message that no action was
needed from the viewer apart from placing their trust in official experts and
bureaucrats.67 This narrative structure was adopted in Centro Documentazione
films. The social and economic problems they highlighted in post-war Italy were
later resolved through a combination of state intervention and foreign aid.68
The work of American documentary film-maker Pare Lorentz was
64
65
66
67
68
Quoted in Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane, A New History of Documentary Film, Continuum,
London, 2005, p. 71.
See Bonifazio, ‘Work, Welfare, Bio-Politics’, p. 158. Writing in 1942 about the need for
propaganda in democratic societies Grierson claimed that ‘it is your democrat who most
needs and demands guidance from his leaders. It is the democratic leader who most must
give it. If only for the sake of quick decision and common action, it is democracy for which
propaganda is the more urgent necessity.’ Quoted in John Grierson, ‘The Nature of
Propaganda’, in Forsyth Hardy (ed.), Grierson on Documentary, Faber and Faber, London,
1979, p. 109.
Brian Winston, Claiming the Real. The Documentary Film Revisited, British Film Institute,
London, 1999, p. 45
Ibid., p. 47
Bonifazio, ‘Work, Welfare, Bio-Politics’, pp. 157-158
223
another notable influence on Centro Documentazione productions.69 He
produced films for the Resettlement Administration, a US federal agency
established in the mid-1930s to relocate urban and rural workers displaced by
the Dust Bowl to new state planned communities, and then in 1938 helped to
create the United States Film Service. His two most important films in terms of
their influence on Italian documentary makers were The Plow that Broke the
Plains (1936) and The River (1937). The former examined the origins of the dust
storms which afflicted the American Great Plains in the 1930s, while the latter
film showcased the work that the Tennessee Valley Authority had carried out in
the Mississippi Valley during the 1930s in an attempt to gain popular support
for further state investment in the area. Lorentz’s films aimed to justify the need
for expensive and at times unpopular official reform programmes.70 Similar to
the Griersonian School of documentaries, ‘social problems were presented as
passing phenomena, actively being corrected by the officials paying for the
film.’71 Centro Documentazione films aimed to fulfil a similar function in the
context of post-war Italy and appear to have taken their cue from Lorentz’s most
famous works. A supplemental element of Lorentz’s film-making that seems to
have influenced Centro Documentazione productions is his use of score which
integrated contemporary elements from folk and popular music. Virgil
Thomson’s original scores for The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River, for
example, incorporated elements from indigenous traditional music that reflect
each film’s historical context and geographical setting. Meticulous attention was
paid to writing and editing scores, ensuring that they dove-tailed smoothly with
69
70
71
For a detailed yet succinct outline of Lorentz’s career see Ellis and McLane, p. 81-91.
Paul Wells, ‘The Documentary Form: Personal and Social ‘Realities’’, in Jill Nelmes (ed.), An
Introduction to Film Studies, Routledge, London, 1996, p. 181
Winston, p. 73
224
the film’s visuals.72 Both of these elements can be found in a number of official
Italian post-war documentaries. Echoes of folk music can be heard in the
musical accompaniment to Centro Documentazione films depending on the
regional setting and it is clear that individual scores were composed specifically
to balance the accompanying narrative and images.
Italian reform documentaries used a past-to-present narrative structure
to promote the image of a country that was evolving rapidly. Writing about the
output of La Settimana INCOM, but applicable to Centro Documentazione films
in general, Pierre Sorlin notes that: ‘beginning with a quick glimpse of the past,
they stressed the improvements introduced by modern techniques and
contrasted old ploughs with tractors or derelict farmhouses with hygienic
modern cowsheds.’ 73 The past-to-present narrative structure gave the viewer
the sense that not only was she or he witnessing Italy’s post-war
transformation, but that they were actively taking part in it themselves.74
Moreover, the narrative structure employed in Centro Documentazione films
meant that Italy’s post-war social and economic problems could be presented as
the legacy of Fascist rule against which the government reconstruction and
reform efforts could be directly contrasted.75
Following the implementation of land reform and the Cassa per il
Mezzogiorno in 1950, southern Italy and the Islands featured heavily in Centro
Documentazione films as the Italian government looked to promote its twin
72
73
74
75
See Ellis and McLane, p. 82-84.
Sorlin, Italian National Cinema, p. 86
Paola Bonifazio, ‘Italian Documentary Filmmakers and the Christian Democratic Road to
Hegemony’, in Eugenio Bolongaro, Mark Epstein and Rita Gagliano (eds.), Creative
Interventions: The Role of Intellectuals in Contemporary Italy, Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
Newcastle, 2009, p. 60
David Forgacs and Steven Gundle, Mass Culture and Society from Fascism to the Cold War,
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2007, p. 218
225
reform programme. The primary intention of official films and newsreels
depicting southern Italy was to promote the process of modernization, the
development of southern agriculture and the effects of the Cassa per il
Mezzogiorno. The protagonist of this transformation was the Italian state. 76
Paola Bonifazio has argued that Centro Documentazione films challenged the
existence of divisive cultural differences between northern and southern Italy.
Rather they focused on the perceived economic disparity between North and
South. Southern economic backwardness was presented as a by-product of
previous governments’ mismanagement combined with natural factors such as
malaria, landslides, and the shortage of water. These problems would be
overcome, it was claimed, thanks to the Italian government’s investment in
infrastructure and new technology. Instead of cultural differences between
North and South, Bonifazio contends, official reconstruction documentaries
presented a discourse of modernization in which the dichotomy was ‘between
those who work and those who are idle, between those who have a family and
those who do not have one.’ 77 These points are reflected in the documentaries
depicting Matera and La Martella examined below. Emphasis is placed on the
need to provide new homes, improved employment conditions, and cement
existing family bonds. The government-sponsored films underline the
importance of patriarchal family values and the potential of southern Italy’s
natural resources and workforce. Predictably non-domestic work depicted in
Centro Documentazione films is male dominated. Women, in contrast, are
mainly presented as mothers and housewives with a few notable exceptions. 78
76
77
78
Frabotta, ‘Government Propaganda’, p. 55
Bonifazio, ‘Italian Documentary Filmmakers’, p. 59
See Bonifazio, ‘Work, Welfare, Bio-Politics’, pp.173-177.
226
Writing about the geography of film Jeff Hopkins contends that ‘the
cinematic landscape is not … a neutral place of entertainment or an objective
documentation or mirror of the “real”, but an ideologically charged cultural
creation whereby meanings of place and society are made, legitimized,
contested, and obscured.’79 The depiction of Matera and La Martella in
government-sponsored documentaries exemplifies this point. The choice of
camera angles, shots, soundtrack, voice-over, and editing made in the
production of these films shaped how the three-dimensional profilmic space
situated in front of the camera was presented as a two-dimensional film
image.80 This process was politically charged. The illusionary cinematic
landscape that these documentaries created aimed to promote government
intervention in southern Italy and at the same time convey the societal values
that the Christian Democrats looked to foster in post-war Italy. This cinematic
space drew on and at the same time reinforced the concept that the Sassi were
emblematic of the southern question. It created stereotypical images of the
Mezzogiorno which were viewed by thousands of Italians. The chronological
analysis of official documentaries depicting Matera and La Martella will provide
an insight into how these ideas changed and developed during the 1950s.
Accade in Lucania
La Martella is featured in the documentary film Accade in Lucania (1953) which
79
80
Jeff Hopkins, ‘A Mapping of Cinematic Places: Icons, Ideology, and the Power of
(Mis)representation’, in Stuart C. Aitken and Leo E. Zonn (eds.), Place, Power, Situation and
Spectacle. A Geography of Film, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, London 1994, pp. 47-65.
This framework for examining space in cinema draws on Natalie Fullwood, ‘Commedie al
femminile: The Gendering of Space in Three Films by Antonio Pietrangeli’, Italian Studies, vol.
65 (March, 2010), no. 1, pp. 85-106; and David Forgacs, ‘Antonioni: Space, Place, Sexuality’,
in Myrto Konstantarakos (ed.), Spaces in European Cinema, Intellect, Exeter, 2000, pp. 101111.
227
showcases the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno’s public works programme in
Basilicata. The documentary presents the region as one of Italy’s most
underdeveloped territories which is undergoing a dramatic transformation
thanks to government investment. The ten-minute film focuses on four distinct
topics: irrigation, the region’s road network, its inadequate housing situation,
and finally education. La Martella is used to highlight the impact that
government intervention has had on Basilicata’s housing problems and to
communicate the message that the move to modern housing strengthens rather
than weakens traditional family bonds. The narrator informs the viewer that ‘tra
le zone depresse d’Italia la Lucania godeva di un triste primato. Non si trattava
di migliorare una situazione economica precaria, ma di creare tutto dal nulla o
quasi.’81 The sequence begins with an extreme long shot of a hill-top town
situated high above deserted country plains. It then cuts to an extreme long shot
of the gravina, or valley which acts as the natural border to Matera’s Sassi,
before cutting to a long shot of an abandoned farm house, a truck crossing a
river at a ford, and shepherds tending to their flock on abandoned flatland. The
discordant orchestral score used in the film’s opening sequence adds to the
sense of desolation that the voice-over and visual images convey. La Martella is
central to the sequence which focuses on housing. A shot of a hill-top town is
juxtaposed with a montage of new farmhouses that the land reform board has
built. The accompanying voice-over presents a stereotypical image of the
prevailing urban makeup of southern Italy: ‘nel Meridione, la casa colonica era
pressoche sconosciuta. La popolazione rurale si era concentrata in grossi
81
Francesco De Feo, Accade in Lucania (Italy, 1953)
228
borghi.’82 The film claims, however, that thanks to the work of the land reform
board, Basilicata is being rapidly transformed. La Martella is presented as the
prime example of this modernization process. The establishing shot of the
village pans right to left, from the parish church to a group of finished houses,
giving the viewer a sense of La Martella’s scale. The narrator conveys the
village’s importance as one of the first land reform villages to be completed:
‘Oggi nelle zone di riforma le nuove case rurali sorgono con ritmo accelerato.
Qua e la villaggi destinati a diventare le future cittadine di questa nuova Lucania
come il borgo La Martella nei pressi di Matera.’ 83 The accompanying mid-shot of
Quaroni’s church reminds the viewer that La Martella is a community founded
upon Catholic values.
Furthermore, a short sequence featuring an agricultural family having
lunch in one the village’s pristine new homes subtly conveys the social values
that the DC looked to foster through its southern development programme. The
implication of the scene is that modern housing protects the sanctity of the
family. The sequence features a number of mid-shots of a patriarchal family
sitting down to lunch. The father figure who sits at the head of the table cuts
bread for his family, another middle-aged man pours wine for himself and the
head of the household, while a traditionally dressed woman stands serving
minestra to three young children. The domestic scene and the voice-over imply
that the move from the Sassi to La Martella has fostered new social values
amongst the former cave dwellers: ‘Una nuova casa, una nuova dignita umana.
Oggi gia in molte zone il contadino lucano si raccoglie in ambienti luminosi e
82
83
Ibid.
Ibid.
229
sereni.’84 This concept of a new sense of dignity directly linked to improved
housing echoes attitudes in Victorian Britain. Overcrowded and inadequate
housing conditions were believed to foster immorality, laziness and bad
manners as much as disease. Slum clearances, it was argued, not only improved
health conditions, but could shape morality and protect the sanctity of the
family.85 This sequence also needs to be understood in the context of the
perceived links between housing and morality prevalent in official sources in
the post-war period as examined in the second chapter of this thesis. The
domestic scene depicted in Accade in Lucania appears to communicate a similar
message. The move from troglodyte dwellings to La Martella’s modern houses, it
is implied, has fostered a newfound self-respect amongst the village’s residents.
The new home has strengthened rather than eroded traditional family values.
Accade in Lucania, therefore, celebrates the arrival of modernization in
Basilicata in the guise of government reforms following centuries of neglect. The
La Martella sequence shows viewers that the DC’s post-war reform programme
strenghtens traditional family values and underscores the Catholic Church’s
central role in Italian society. The risanamento programme has delivered
Matera’s cave dwellers from inadequate living conditions which fostered moral
degeneracy. Writing about the Christian Democrats’ post-war electoral success,
Rosario Forlenza has noted that they ‘answered a need for stability, security and
reconciliation in a society emerging from years of warfare, and accordingly it
84
85
Ibid.
Dorothy Porter, Health, Civilization and the State. A history of public health from ancient to
modern times, Routledge, London, 1999, p. 114
230
stressed the importance of family and of women.’86 This rhetorical message is
clearly reflected in Accade in Lucania’s depiction of family life at La Martella.
Paesi Nuovi and Cronache del Mezzogiorno
The concept of La Martella as a symbol of southern Italy’s rapid transformation
thanks to government reform is also conveyed in the documentaries Paesi Nuovi
(1954) and Cronache del Mezzogiorno (1955).87 In these two films La Martella is
presented as a fully functioning town with a vibrant community. This message is
communicated in Paesi Nuovi through the juxtaposition of La Martella with a
number of land reform villages either recently inaugurated or still under
construction. In contrast to the half-finished villages profiled at the start of the
film, La Martella is presented as a model town with a fully-formed and
functioning community where there is work for all. This point is made explicitly
in the voice-over which accompanies a wide shot of the village’s pristine houses:
‘In uno dei piu grossi borghi, borgo La Martella presso Matera, ormai la vita e
nel suo pieno ritmo, la borgata si e sviluppata, la gente attende al proprio lavoro,
e ha preso abitudine alla nuova dimora, come se qui avesse abitato da sempre,
mentre le case sanno ancora di calce.’ 88 This sense of La Martella’s rapid
transformation into a prototypical village is further emphasized by the film’s
narrative structure which describes Sundays in the new community. The market
scene underlines the gender roles assigned in the new village. A group of
86
87
88
Rosario Forlenza, ‘A Party for the Mezzogiorno. The Christian Democratic Party, Agrarian
Reform and the Government of Italy’, Contemporary European History, vol. 19 (2010), no. 4,
p. 333
Paesi Nuovi (Italy, 1954) was made for the Centro Documentazione by the recently relaunched Istituto Luce and was shown together with Robert G. Springsteen’s film Detective G.
Sezione Criminale. See Frabotta, Il governo filma l’Italia, p. 114. For a brief summary of the
rebirth of the Istituto Luce see Frabotta, ‘Government Propaganda’, pp. 60-61.
Giovanni Passante, Paesi Nuovi (Italy, 1954)
231
women wearing contemporary clothing are depicted buying material for clothes
while the town’s men purchase farming equipment. Apart from a shot of a
woman feeding some chickens, women’s role in agricultural work, especially
physical labour, is not acknowledged in the film. The implication is that female
manual labour does not fit the official vision for the new community. The
market sequence culminates with a shot of La Martella’s residents entering the
village’s church. The voice-over underlines that Catholicism is at the heart of
community life: ‘la casa di Dio nata con le loro case, il lavoro per tutti una
benedizione del cielo.’89 Paesi Nuovi, therefore, presents La Martella as a model
town which embodies the societal values that the Christian Democrats looked to
promote in post-war Italy: the traditional family, improved housing,
employment, and the centrality of the Catholic Church.
Cronache del Mezzogiorno promotes the impact that land reform and the
Cassa del Mezzogiorno had in Calabria, Puglia, Sardinia, Sicily, and Basilicata in
the early 1950s. It features a short sequence showcasing La Martella. Again the
village’s apparent strong sense of community is underlined. This message is
created through shots of the town’s residents congregating in the main square,
children attending primary school and the local carabiniere officer with his
children. The accompanying voice-over uses the past-to-present narrative trope
to underline southern Italy’s rapid development. The new village is described as
a place where ‘una gallina da cuocere e un uovo da bere non manca piu a
nessuno.’90 A number of panoramic and mid-shots depicting the new village are
juxtaposed with dialogue describing the residents’ improved living conditions:
89
90
Ibid.
Elio Tarquini, Cronache del Mezzogiorno (Italy, 1955)
232
‘e la gente che viveva nei Sassi di Matera, la civilta ha cancellato ogni cupezza.’ 91
The sequence features no images of the Sassi and the voice-over provides no
further description of Matera’s troglodyte homes. The implication, however, is
that the Sassi need no introduction to the viewer and that the city’s name alone
is enough to evoke an image of southern backwardness. Furthermore, the voiceover suggests that La Martella’s living conditions have had a transformative
effect on the villagers’ existential and moral wellbeing: they once lived like
savages, but have now been civilized thanks to improved housing. Although the
La Martella sequence is fleeting in the film’s overall context, its rhetorical
message is clear. The construction of La Martella is the first step in resolving
Matera’s widely publicized housing problems which had been dubbed a national
shame. The village is a fully-functioning community which has removed the
uncertainty of life in the Sassi through education, housing, and employment. The
depiction of family life in Cronache del Mezzogiorno and Paesi Nuovi echoes the
message in a letter from Mariano Rumor (the then head of the DC’s Ufficio studi
propaganda e stampa) dated 16 June 1954 to the Christian Democrats’ weekly
and periodic publications. The text was addressed directly to Italy’s rural
workers. It looked to communicate four main points: the important role that
rural culture could play in Italy’s post-war development, the sanctity of the
traditional family, the right to education, the central role of Catholicism, and
how these values had been protected and improved thanks to government
reforms in southern Italy.92
91
92
Passante
Rumor wrote that: ‘La Democrazia Cristiana, nel difendere la libertà attraverso la sua azione
politica, di tutti questi anni, ha voluto difendere ciò che per voi è più sacro: la santità e la
pace delle famiglie, la libera educazione dei figli, il rispetto della religione, le sane ed antiche
tradizioni contadine, che, ereditate dai vostri padri, sono ancor oggi alla base della vostra
233
Borgate della riforma
The use of Matera and La Martella to promote government reform reached its
apex in the 1955 documentary Borgate della riforma.93 The film showcases a
number of new villages in southern Italy that the land reform board had
constructed including Borgo della Liberta, S. Rita and Gaudiano in Puglia;
Rovalle in Calabria; and Scanzano, Policoro, and La Martella in Basilicata. The
bulk of the film is shot from the perspective of an airplane passing overhead.
This device is used to convey the vast scale of work carried out by the land
reform board in the three regions. A select number of villages are profiled
further at ground level. The film’s central sequence contrasts Matera’s Sassi and
La Martella. Over half of the short documentary’s seven minutes and twentythree seconds focus on the Sassi and the purpose-built village. Borgate della
riforma was produced in 1955 illustrating that Matera and La Martella
continued to be important images in promoting state intervention in southern
Italy at that point in time. The fact that the village was one of the first reform
projects to be inaugurated would appear to explain its enduring importance. La
93
vita comune. Non sempre la società italiana aveva compreso e valorizzato la civiltà contadina
[which the communiqué implies is southern rural culture], che pure rappresenta tanta parte
della vita italiana, né aveva saputo aiutare il vostro progresso, l’elevazione delle vostre
condizioni di vita, il miglioramento della vostra cultura. Con una coraggiosa politica di
rinnovamento – pur tra mille difficoltà – mediante la Riforma Agraria, la Cassa del
Mezzogiorno, le opere di bonifica nelle aree depresse, la legge per la montagna, il piano
dodecennale per l’agricoltura, l’impulso alla meccanizzazione, la creazione e la difesa della
piccola proprietà contadina, la Democrazia Cristiana ha voluto invece porre all’ordine del
giorno di tutta la Nazione il problema dello sviluppo del mondo contadino e quello della
liberazione ed elevazione umana di quei contadini che erano in condizioni di maggiore
abbandono e di più umiliante soggezione. Oggi tutta la Nazione è consapevole che il futuro
della intera democrazia italiana passa anche attraverso il miglioramento delle condizioni
sociali, economiche, spirituali ed umane del mondo contadino.’ ASILS, FDC, Segreteria
politica, Atti dei segretari 6, Alcide De Gasperi, Uffici centrali, Circolari emesse dagli uffici,
1953, Sc. 18, fasc. 11, Spes.
Borgate della riforma was produced by Documento Film in 1955 and directed by Luigi
Scattini. The film was shown together with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. For film’s full
production credits see Frabotta, Il governo filma l’Italia, p. 115.
234
Martella could be juxtaposed with work in progress to underline that
government intervention in southern Italy had already delivered concrete
results.
The Matera-La Martella sequence in Borgate della riforma echoes a
number of British documentaries that focused on urban planning and promoted
New Towns in the post-war period, e.g. The City (1939), When We Build Again
(1943), Proud City (1945), New Town (1948), Planned Town (1948), and Home of
Your Own (1951). These films shared a basic narrative structure: ‘The first
[shot] was the image of the crowded and decrepit inner-city slum. The
dilapidated state of the urban fabric symbolized the historic legacy of
unplanned development, with the obligatory shots of children playing in the
gutter emphasizing the waste of human potential.’94 Echoing the rhetorical
strategies that Carlo Levi employed in his description of Matera, these
sequences provided the moral imperative for government intervention and
highlighted the need for urban planning to resolve social and housing problems.
The latter half of the documentary focused on housing but underlined that
building alone was not enough. Rather, ‘what was needed … were
comprehensive approaches that saw rehousing the population as involving
other key functions of the city – including transport, workplace and
employment patterns, recreation, neighbourhood planning and post-war
reconstruction.’95 A similar narrative structure is adopted in the Matera-La
Martella sequence featured in Borgate della riforma. The Sassi are used to
present the city’s inadequate housing conditions. La Martella, in contrast, is
94
95
John R. Gold and Stephen V. Ward, ‘We’re Going to Do It Right This Time: Cinematic
Representations of Urban Planning and the British New Towns, 1939 to 1951’, in Aitken and
Zonn, p. 235
Ibid., p. 235
235
presented as a model for resolving this problem. However, the village is not
merely an answer to Matera’s housing problems according to the film. It has also
been designed to provide employment, leisure activities and to foster a new
rural community. Predictably this community reflects the societal values that
the DC looked to promote in post-war Italy.
The Matera sequence begins with an establishing shot of the Sassi and
Matera’s distinctive gorge from the air. The musical accompaniment shifts from
a playful aria to a discordant tone when the Sassi first appear on screen.
Moreover, the voice-over hints at recurring themes in official documentaries
that depict Basilicata: the region’s position outside of modernity, the struggle
against untamed natural elements, and its previous neglect by the Italian state:
‘Sono in volo sulla Lucania. La terra che sembrava dimenticata da Dio e dagli
uomini. In questa zona depressa le citta sorgevano sugli strapiombi quasi a
distintiva difesa contro le forze della natura.’96 The juxtaposition of the
narrator’s words with an aerial shot of Matera implies that the town is
emblematic of southern Italy’s natural and economic problems. The sequence
continues with a number of panoramic views of Sasso Caveoso interspersed
with long shots of cave homes taken from the airplane above. This cuts to a midshot of two children filmed at street level in the Sassi. High-angle framing is
used to illustrate the Sassi’s distinctive urban layout: the descending pathway
on which the children play doubles up as the rooftops of the houses below. The
accompanying voice-over implies that the poverty of those living amongst the
Sassi is moral as well as material: ‘Matera e una vecchia citta nata sulla roccia,
ancora tristamente famosa per i Sassi, luogo di estrema miseria in cui vivevano
96
Luigi Scattini, Borgate della riforma (Italy, 1955)
236
nel piu grande squallore centinaia e centinaia di famiglie.’97 The narrator,
however, makes it clear that hundreds of families used to live in extreme poverty.
The implication is that the town’s age-old housing problems are finally being
resolved thanks to government intervention.
The next sequence focuses on Matera’s housing situation. It starts with a
pan from left to right across the roofs of a number of homes before a crane shot
downwards from the street level above reveals a vicinato below. The camera
work looks to convey the density of homes amongst the Sassi. However, voiceover rather than an internal shot is employed to describe the city’s distinctive
housing situation: ‘le case sono scavate nella roccia e la vita si svolge sotto terra
dove entra solamente un pallido raggio di sole.’98 Echoing Levi’s description of
the Sassi, light and dark are repeatedly used as a metaphor for backwardness
and modernity in the Matera-La Martella sequence. The film’s imagery implies
that public works have delivered the Sassi’s inhabitants from darkness into the
light, i.e. from their troglodyte homes to modern housing.
A transitional sequence between the Matera and La Martella sections is
used to convey the passage from the town’s past, embodied by the Sassi, to its
future, symbolized by La Martella. A panning shot from Matera’s Cathedral
moves to the right before the camera tilts upwards into the sky above the city.
The soundtrack becomes more upbeat in conjunction with the tone of the voiceover: ‘Non basta a scaldare il corpo e il cuore di chi soffre. Le porte di questi
buchi stanno man mano chiudendosi e una nuova possibilita di vita si offre a
coloro che forse non credevano piu alla vita.’99 The salvation offered to Matera’s
97
98
99
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
237
poor comes in the shape of alternative housing. The transitional sequence is
shot from the perspective of the low-flying airplane. The on-board camera
moves rapidly across the quickly changing terrain suggesting the fast pace of
Matera’s transformation. The airplane passes above a new housing estate on the
city’s outskirts before continuing its journey through the countryside near
Matera showcasing additional new apartment blocks under construction. The
voice-over makes it clear that the city’s housing problems are finally being
resolved thanks to state intervention: ‘E accanto alla vecchia citta ne e sorta una
nuova ... anche Matera ora puo guardare all’avvenire con rinnovata fiducia.’100
The future being referred to is embodied by the already ‘completed’ village of La
Martella which is the focus of the film’s next section.
Borgate della riforma’s La Martella sequence is the most detailed
cinematic document of the village in the years following its inauguration. This
section of the film implies that housing conditions are not only linked to
physical health and fears about hygiene, but also to the existential wellbeing of
Sassi residents. It opens with a panoramic-establishing shot of the village from
the air before cutting to a long shot of La Martella from above. Notably the
soundtrack changes along with the visual transition from Matera’s hinterland to
La Martella: the discordant elements are replaced with a melodic orchestral
refrain with hints of regional-folk music. The first scene in this sequence
conveys the improved health conditions that La Martella offers its new residents
in comparison to the Sassi. It opens with a long-shot of the village taken from
the air before cutting to a mid-shot of young children playing in the garden of a
pristine new house while a group of women sit sewing in the garden. The
100
Ibid.
238
children at La Martella are noticeably better dressed than those depicted in the
earlier Matera sequence. The voice-over underlines the improved sanitary
conditions of La Martella’s new residents. ‘Non piu case scavate nella roccia, ma
abitazioni con giardini dove le donne e i bambini possono finalmente godersi il
sole.’101 Again light is used to symbolize health conditions. The implication is
that La Martella’s residents have been delivered from the dark and unsanitary
conditions of the Sassi to their new pristine homes. Moreover, similar to the
other Centro Documentazione films depicting La Martella, women in the new
village are assigned the role of domestic workers, wives and mothers.
The next scene showcases La Martella’s housing. A mid-shot of an
assignee working in the allotment at the back of his house is used to depict the
hardworking nature of the village’s new inhabitants. It again underlines the
gender roles assigned to residents: women are domestic workers while men
work in agriculture. The sequence continues depicting two horse-drawn
carriages passing each other on the village’s main road. The shot is framed to
show the abundant space and resulting accessibility that La Martella offers to its
residents in contrast to the narrow terraced streets of the Sassi. The voice-over
reinforces this point: ‘Lo stile architettonico e in armonia con le caratteristiche
strade transitabili in tutti sensi. Che confronto con i sentieri inaccessibili dei
Sassi.’102 Finally, La Martella is presented as a fully functioning and autonomous
community. This is achieved by showcasing the village’s public buildings from
the public meeting house, the Church, the cinema – still under construction –
and the Post Office with a man shown posting a letter. The voice-over notes that:
101
102
Ibid.
Ibid.
239
‘la vita della borgata e autonoma. I principali servizi sono assicurati: la casa di
ritrovo, la chiesa di ardita architettura, il cinema ancora in costruzione e la
posta. C’e tutto no?’103 La Martella, therefore, is depicted as a model village
which provides housing, work as well as spiritual and material sustenance to its
residents. The film presents the village as a pioneering project which could be
replicated throughout southern Italy. This point is implied in the documentary’s
latter half which focuses on new towns under construction and destined to
house new rural communities. Despite the reassuring tone of the narrator,
however, the La Martella project encountered numerous problems in its early
life which are examined in detail below. These problems had come to a head in
1955 when Borgate della riforma was shot, illustrating the gap between life at
La Martella and the village’s role in the promotion of official reform in southern
Italy.
Writing in the context of the intervento straordinario, Maria Adelaide
Frabotta argues that: ‘as in any large-scale reconstruction it was necessary to
create myths and offer projects which promised a better future.’ 104 The
depiction of La Martella in Centro Documentazione commissioned films
exemplifies this point. The village was portrayed as a fully-functioning
community built from scratch which represented the first step in resolving the
problem of the Sassi thanks to the combined resources of the Cassa per il
Mezzogiorno, agrarian reform and the ERP. In contrast, the Sassi provided a
ready-made symbol of the southern question. They embodied southern Italy’s
difficult past which, according to government rhetoric, had been finally left
103
104
Ibid.
Frabotta, ‘Government Propaganda’, p. 51
240
behind. In the context of Italy’s post-war housing crisis, the depiction of La
Martella in Centro Documentazione films provides an insight into the values
that the Christian Democrats looked to communicate to viewers. The sanctity of
the nuclear family, central to the DC’s rhetoric, was linked to the sanctity of the
home. The concept that housing could shape morality is one of the undertones
of Centro Documentazione films depicting Matera and La Martella. The
organization of Matera’s former cave dwellers into normative family units and
the resulting improvement in their moral wellbeing is one of the supplemental
themes implied in the depiction of La Martella in official propaganda films.
Cinema continued to be Italy’s preferred commercial mass entertainment
in the mid-1950s. As a result the images of Matera and La Martella in Centro
Documentazione productions examined above were shown widely. While the
majority of cinemas and thus audience members were concentrated in
provincial capitals and large towns, the fact that, as outlined above, it was
compulsory to show Centro Documentazione newsreels and documentaries
means that regular cinema-goers would have been exposed to images of Matera
and La Martella as symbols of the southern question and a model for southern
development respectively.105 It is difficult to gauge the impact that these films
had at a popular level. However, as this chapter has attempted to show, Italian
cinema audiences in the immediate post-war period were presented with
images of the South, the nuclear family and normative gender roles directly
filtered through the DC’s political lens as Italy’s ruling party looked to promote
its twin reform programme, social values, and version of Italian national
105
For information on cinema going in Italy from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s see Forgacs
and Gundle, pp. 42-53.
241
identity. Images of Matera and La Martella played an important role in this
process during the 1950s.
4.4 Limitations of the La Martella project
La Martella fell short of the original vision for an autonomous rural community
set out by its planners and many of its buildings were lying in a state of
disrepair by the late 1960s.106 Despite being hailed as a model for the future of
southern development due to its combination of cutting-edge town planning
theories, Neorealist architecture as well as funding from the ERP and the Cassa
per il Mezzogiorno, the reality of the project was in stark contrast to the utopian
image portrayed in the official sources examined above as well as contemporary
architectural and urban planning periodicals and documentaries. 107 A number
of factors hampered the project from the outset and contributed to its slow
decline. First, there was a lack of coordination between the different
106
107
La Martella’s trajectory from model of southern development to a symbol of the intervento
straordinario’s limitations is encapsulated by the historian Muriel Grindrod’s account of the
village. Writing in 1955 about the effects of ERP funding and official reform in southern Italy,
Grindrod noted: ‘Perhaps the most outstanding example is the village of La Martella, in
Lucania, built with funds from the UNRRA-CASAS and the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno.
Inaugurated in May 1953, La Martella is to provide accommodation for families from the
‘Sassi’, the cave-dwellings of Matera, whose plight is described in Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped
at Eboli.’ See Muriel Grindrod, The Rebuilding of Italy: Politics and Economics 1945-1955, The
Broadwater Press, Hertfordshire, 1955, p. 212. However, writing on the same subject just
over a decade later Grindrod outlined the project’s apparent failure: ‘The classic example of
this reluctance to leave the known for the unknown was La Martella, the village established
early in the 1950s seven kilometres outside the Lucanian town of Matera to house the
inhabitants of the Sassi, the cave-dwellings made famous by Carlo Levi’s description of them,
which were to be closed. Twelve years later nearly half the caves were still inhabited, while
La Martella was half empty; the peasants used the houses there to keep tools, journeying
there each day to work on their plots.’ See Muriel Grindrod, Italy, Ernest Benn Limited,
London, 1968, p. 211.
See for example Giancarlo De Carlo, ‘A proposito di La Martella, Casbella continuità, (1954),
no. 200, pp. v-viii; Ludovico Quaroni, ‘La chiesa del villaggio “La Martella”’, Casabella
continuità, (1955), no. 208, pp. 30-34; Ludovico Quaroni, ‘La chiesa: lo spazio interno’,
Casabella continuità, (1955), no. 208, pp. 34-42; Paolo Portoghesi, ‘L’esperimento la
Martella’, Civiltà delle macchine, (1955), no. 6, pp. 16-20; Michele Prisco, ‘La Martella è un
simbolo del Mezzogiorno in cammino’, Prospettive meridionali, (1955), no.6, pp. 13-15.
Furthermore, Matera and La Martella were the primary focus of Nicolò Ferrari’s
documentary Cronache dell’Urbanistica italiana, (Italy, 1954) which uses the Sassi to
exemplify Italy’s post-war housing crisis and La Martella as a model for town planning.
242
organizations involved in completing the village’s construction, i.e. UNRRACASAS and the land reform board. In a letter to Emilio Colombo dated 27 August
1953, Giuseppe Lamacchia, the mayor of Matera, noted that ‘il mancato
coordinamento delle attivita esplicate dagli enti in parola e la mancata
collaborazione nel quadro della visione unitaria della vita del borgo hanno
prodotto vaste e profonde fratture che incidono sensibilmente sullo sviluppo del
borgo.’108 This lack of coordination continued during La Martella’s early life and
delayed the provision of a number of the village’s public buildings and essential
services. By February 1955, 90 of the projected 200 projected houses at La
Martella had been occupied by families from the Sassi. The village had a
population of approximately 1,000 residents. The new town, however, was still
without a post office, a suitable school building, a public telephone, a working
doctor’s surgery, a resident doctor and midwife as well as adequate public
transport facilities.109 Furthermore, there were structural problems with the
village’s newly built homes. The leakage of rainwater in 1954 had rendered a
number of houses uninhabitable forcing residents to leave their homes
temporarily.110 Moreover, the communal ovens, designed to recreate the social
108
109
110
The letter continues by cataloguing the specific failures of the official bodies responsible for
La Martella’s completion. See ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero
1990), busta 82, fascicolo 662, sottofascicolo B, Risanamento dei rioni dei “Sassi” di Matera.
Legge 17 maggio 1952: Programma delle opere e degli interventi.
ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo 675,
sottofascicolo 3. “Borgo rurale La Martella – Ufficio postale e telegrafico”; ASM, Prefettura,
Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo 675, sottofascicolo 6.
“Edificio scolastico”; ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990),
busta 83, fascicolo 675, sottofascicolo 8. “Assistenza sanitaria-medico-ostretica e armadio
farmeutico”; ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83,
fascicolo 675, sottofascicolo 9. “Rete elettrica”; ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di
Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo 675, sottofascicolo 10. “Rete idrica e
fognante”; ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83,
fascicolo 675, sottofascicolo 13. “Borgo La Martella – Collegamento telefonico”.
A letter from Romano Pasquinageli, head of the local carabinieri, to the town’s Prefect, dated
18 November 1954, noted that three families were forced to abandon their homes at La
Martella ‘per forte infiltrazione acqua e difetto costruzione’. See ASM, Prefettura, Atti
243
ties of the Sassi, were not completed in time for the village’s opening in 1953
following a dispute between the two companies responsible for their
construction.111 Instead the women of La Martella were ferried to and from
Matera once a week to use the Sassi’s public ovens. The failure of the village’s
only shop, managed by the land reform board, to provide adequate supplies of
essential foodstuffs and cooking supplies (including bread, oil, salt, wine and
salt) further exacerbated the situation. As a result La Martella was still
completely dependent on the provincial capital and its residents were forced to
make regular bus trips to Matera at a cost of 100 lire each way.112
Furthermore, the process of allocating land and housing to La Martella’s
residents created social disharmony within the new community. In order to
ensure that the village would be self-sufficient the Commissione Speciale dei
Sassi, following advice from UNRRA-CASAS, had decided to allocate houses to
families who owned or rented at least three hectares of land in the vicinity of La
Martella. The existing plot of land would then be augmented by an allocation
from the land reform board (this type of farm was known as a quota while small
111
112
Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83: fascicolo 675, sottofascicolo 1.
“Matera –Risanamento Sassi – L. 17-5-1952, no. 619 – Borgo rurale La Martella –Famiglie
assegnatarie delle case e delle terre”.
In a letter addressed to the local prefect, dated 12 June 1953, Giuseppe Spanò, captain of the
local carabinieri noted that: ‘Fra abitanti Villaggio “La Martella” persiste malcontento da
parte degli assegnatari per la mancata costruzione del forno.’ Problems with communal
ovens in the village were still apparent in 1958. A letter from Enrico Stellacci, the then
captain of Matera’s carabinieri, to the local prefect, dated 5 July 1958, notes that 30 women
protested outside the police barracks at La Martella unhappy with the conditions of oven
facilities. See Archivio di Stato di Matera, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto
(Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo 675, sottofascicolo 11. “Costruzione forno da pane”.
Friedmann, Miseria e dignità, p. 71. For detailed correspondence on the delayed completion
of La Martella’s communal ovens see ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto
(Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo 675, sottofascicolo 11. “Costruzione forno da pane”. The
letter of complaint about food supplies, the lack of farrier, and a barber can be found in
Archivio di Stato di Matera, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990),
busta 83, fascicolo, sottofascicolo 12. “Borgo La Martella – Varie”.
244
farms allocated to landless peasants were called poderi).113 There were a total of
90 new homes available in the first batch of houses built. As noted above, fortynine land reform assignees and their families had been transferred to La
Martella on 17 May 1953. Another eight assignees and their families moved to
the village in November of the same year. Fifty-eight families renting land near
La Martella were earmarked as potential assignees for the remaining 33 houses.
However, only 13 were interested in moving to the new village. The remaining
families deemed the three hectares of additional land that the reform board had
offered as too small to meet their farming needs. This refusal was telling of
popular attitudes towards La Martella, as the land offered would have
transformed these agricultural workers from short-term tenant farmers into
small landowners.114
In January 1954 only 10 of the 58 families that the land reform board had
originally shortlisted for rehousing were transferred to La Martella. The
remaining 23 houses were assigned in February 1954 to families chosen by
UNRRA-CASAS and the local town council. However, these families were not
eligible for land from the reform board; rather they were granted housing under
the provisions of the special law for the Sassi. The 23 newly-transferred
families, predominately landless and some from homes that had been defined as
suitable for renovation, called on the reform board to provide them with land
and work. Writing in 1955 about the lessons that needed to be learned from La
Martella, Fedele Aiello argued that placing families assigned land and housing
by the agricultural reform board in the same village as those evacuated from the
113
114
Foot, Modern Italy, pp. 115-116
Aiello, pp. 63-64
245
Sassi under the terms of the Special Law had created a dangerous division in La
Martella’s fledgling community.115 This division was illustrated in a letter of
protest from landless residents to the local prefect, bishop and land reform
office dated 13 October 1955. The failure to provide land meant that the nine
signatories and their families had effectively been without work and income
since moving to the village in February 1954.
Di fronte a questa situazione abbastanza precaria fanno appello alle
autorita intestate affinche prendano in seria considerazione la questione
in oggetto, vogliono richiamare l’Ente di Riforma e farla subito
all’assegnazione, altrimenti questi lavoratori della terra che sono stati
spostati, chi per le case malsane e chi per le famiglie numerose non
possono restare inermi, senza terra e senza lavoro, peggiorando giorno
per giorno le loro condizioni di vita. Fanno voti affinche vengano adottati
tutti i provvedimenti onde evitare le continue agitazioni e i continui
disagi che l’incombe giorno per giorno. Attuare quella che e la vera
giustizia e serieta nell’assegnazione delle terre ed evitare dissidi fra i
lavoratori stessi.116
When UNRRA-CASAS proposed creating an agricultural cooperative for the 23
landless families in spring 1954, the Ente di riforma decided to include the new
residents amongst its assignees. As a result the land reform board became La
Martella’s most influential public body.117
Land allocation, however, did not fully resolve La Martella’s social or
labour problems. Some of the plots assigned to residents were situated as far
from La Martella as they were from Matera thus nullifying one of the project’s
main aims, i.e. to move small landowners closer to their workplace and increase
115
116
117
For a detailed account of housing allocation at La Martella see Aiello, p. 63-64.
See ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 161, fascicolo
1370. Moreover, an article in the regional newspaper Basilicata in October 1955 reported
that eleven families transferred to La Martella were still waiting to receive agricultural land
from the reform board and as a result were living in dire poverty. Despite numerous efforts
to obtain the land promised to them, including letters to local and national politicians as well
as the reform board, no indication had been given about when the situation would be finally
resolved. ‘Nuovamente alla ribalta il villaggio “La Martella”. Undici famiglie sono ancora
senza terra’, Basilicata, 23 October 1955, p. 1.
Aiello, pp. 64-65
246
agricultural productivity. Speaking about the land allocated to his family after
their transfer to La Martella, Angelo Raffaele Belfiore noted that ‘dall’allogio che
ci avevano dato, per raggiungere la campagna, vicino Santa Maria d’Irsi, ci
volevano quasi 5 ore. Troppo lontano. La promessa di assegnarci la terra sotto
casa non fu mantenuta.’118 Furthermore, there were problems with the quality
of land that the reform board had distributed. A letter of complaint signed by
ten assignees at La Martella to the local prefect and mayor, dated 19 November
1953, claims that much of the land distributed was rocky, infertile and wholly
unsuitable for agriculture. The letter alludes to the social divisions that land
allocation had created amongst the village’s assignees. 119 There were, in
addition, problems in expropriating the required amount of land needed for La
Martella’s new residents. A letter from the Prefect of Matera, dated 7 June 1955,
to the president of the Consorzio del Medio Bradano notes that the agricultural
reform board was struggling to find the required 260 hectares of land needed
for the 68 families scheduled to move to La Martella.120
The various teething problems during La Martella’s early life caused
widespread discontent amongst the village’s residents. This manifested itself in
popular protest which culminated in the so-called marcia su Matera on 3
February 1955. Following a public meeting the night before, between 50 and 80
residents from the village travelled to the provincial capital by bus to protest
118
119
120
See Doria, p. 75.
‘È nostra convinzione che gli abitanti di La Martella abbiano gli stessi diritti ... fin del
momento del nostro primo ingresso nel nuovo borgo facemmo presente alla S.V. che le quote
assegnateci non erano rispondenti ai nostri desideri ed ai più elementari principi di giustizia
in quanto formate in gran parte da terreno inadatto alla coltivazione e alla produzione.
Alcune quote sono costituite interamente da buone terre, altre da buona parte di terreno
roccioso, altre da rilevante quantità di terreno incoltivabile.’ ASM, Prefettura, Atti
Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo 675, sottofascicolo 5.
“Rapporti degli assegnatari con l’Ente riforma fondiaria”.
ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (ricovero 1990), busta 82, fascicolo 669,
sottofascicolo 2
247
against infrastructural problems with housing; the lack of postal and telephonic
services; the failure to supply a blacksmith, a barber, and a local land reform
office; and the degradation of the village’s internal road network.121 Together
with the local priest and a number of social workers that UNRRA-CASAS had
provided the village, the protesters delivered a petition to the relief agency’s
local offices and the Prefect of Matera.122 The ‘march on Matera’ provoked
debate about La Martella’s social conditions in the local press. Criticism of the
village’s troubled development was led by the Matera-based weekly Basilicata,
which was closely linked to Adriano Olivetti’s Comunità movement and the
erstwhile Action Party.123 According to an article published on 13 February
1955, the protest earlier that month had removed ‘il velo alla patina edulcorata
ed ufficiale che avvolge quello che – comunque – e da giudicare come il primo
serio tentativo di adeguare la riforma agraria e l’edilizia rurale alla realta della
vita contadina.’124 Moreover, Basilicata claimed that rivalry between the land
reform board and UNRRA-CASAS had resulted in the former deliberately
obstructing the village’s completion.125 In contrast, the local ecclesiastical
121
122
123
124
125
Restucci and Tafuri, p. 49
This narrative of events was reported in an article by Leonardo Sacco which appeared in Il
Mondo on 15 September 1955 and later reproduced in his book Matera contemporanea.
Cultura e società, Basilicata editrice, Matera, 1982, pp. 50-55. However, the police report of
the incident makes no mention of the involvement of either the priest or social workers. See
the letter from captain of the local carabinieri, Michele Frangipane, dated 3 February 1955,
to the both the Prefect and police headquarters at Matera. Archivio di Stato di Matera,
Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo 675,
sottofascicolo 1. “Matera –Risanamento Sassi – L. 17-5-1952, no. 619, Borgo rurale La
Martella, Famiglie assegnatarie delle case e delle terre”.
For a history of the Basilicata newspaper, which ran from 1954 to 1962, see Baglieri, Fabbri
and Sacco, pp. ix-xxvii.
‘La Martella vuol vivere’, Basilicata, 13 February, 1955, p. 1
‘L’Ente di Riforma non ha mai visto favorelmente il nuovo villaggio, per diverse ragioni:
perchè il proprietario delle case è un altro ente, l’UNRRA-CASAS, che vi svolge una diretta
opera di assistenza sociale; e tutta l’iniziativa, dalla concezione urbanistica al tipo di
ambiente sociale che ne deriva, e più ancora ne può derivare; non è in linea con l’idea
dell’Ente di Riforma stesso. Perciò l’atteggiamento adottato verso questa vera e propria
248
newspaper, L’Eco di Matera blamed La Martella’s problems on the social,
political and religious backwardness of the village’s new inhabitants. An article
in its July 1955 edition claimed that La Martella’s social and political
development was being impeded by an egoism which pervaded the village’s
daily life. Furthermore, the new community was spiritually deficient: turnout at
Catholic mass was reported to be poor and a number of residents were, instead,
reported to be attending an Evangelical service in return for material reward.126
The new community’s social and spiritual poverty, according to the article, was
nothing more than could be expected from former inhabitants of the Sassi. 127
The protest on 3 February 1955 was the catalyst behind a public debate
about La Martella’s various problems. Two public meetings entitled Presente e
avvenire della Martella were held on 17 February and 17 March 1955 to discuss
the village’s on-going difficulties. The meetings were attended by approximately
30 to 40 people including provincial representatives of the main political
parties, local journalists and a number of the village’s residents. 128 During the
first meeting an unnamed La Martella resident gave a speech that catalogued
the practical difficulties the villagers had experienced since moving to the
126
127
128
“anomolia” che è La Martella è stato deciso e continuo: ostacolare il completamento del
villaggio, impedire la sua piena realizzazione.’ Ibid. p. 1
‘Ci chiediamo se la popolazione evacuata aveva quella ricchezza spirituale (non solo
religioso, ma anche più strettamente umana, cioè sociale e politica) tanta necessaria anche in
un risanamento economico. Dopo aver esaminato quei tre elementi – sociale, politico e
religioso – che dovrebbero essere il tessuto connettivo, le premesse fondamentali della
creazione di una comunità moderna e democratica, ci siamo accorti che qualsiasi anelito
sociale, o coscienza politica, o spirito religioso, è in deficienza.’ See Sacco, Matera
contemporanea, p. 53.
‘È impossibile che tutto questo modo di vivere sia sorto come per incanto: ha indubbiamente
le sue radici profonde nella tradizione e nelle abitudini che la gente ha portato al borgo dal
suo luogo d’origine, cioè dal sasso.’ Excerpts from the Eco di Matera article are reproduced in
Sacco, Matera contemporanea, p. 53.
Details of the two meetings are outlined in reports from the local police commissioner to the
Prefect of Matera dated 21 February and 18 March respectively. See ASM, Prefettura, Atti
Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 70, fascicolo 652: Matera situazione
locale – ordine pubblico (1952-1956).
249
widely-publicized project. The speaker underlined that tensions between
UNRRA-CASAS and the land reform board had had a negative impact on the lives
of La Martella’s residents: ‘siete impegnati in lotte fra di voi e volete riversarne
su di noi le conseguenze; e tempo che vi mettiate d’accordo e ci lasciate in
pace.’129 However, notably no officials from the land reform board or UNRRACASAS attended either meeting.
Although La Martella’s post office was finally opened on 1 April 1955
problems with the primary school building and the village’s medical service
persisted.130 The team of UNRRA-CASAS social workers that provided adult
education courses and social assistance in the village ceased working at La
Martella in June 1955. Their removal from the town appears to have been
directly linked to their involvement in the popular protest on 3 February of the
same year as well as accusations that they were in fact communists.131 The
UNRRA-CASAS social workers employed at La Martella, however, denied
accusations of political bias. Moreover, they warned that their removal from the
village would increase the gap between the state and the new community and
129
130
131
Giovanni Dello Jacovo, ‘Il villaggio La Martella, due anni dopo’, Cronache meridionali, (1955),
no. 7-8, pp. 497-501
See ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo
675, sottofascicolo 3. “Borgo rurale La Martella, Ufficio postale e telegrafico”; ASM,
Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto (Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo 675,
sottofascicolo 6. “Edificio scolastico”; ASM, Prefettura, Atti Amministrativi di Gabinetto
(Ricovero 1990), busta 83, fascicolo 675, sottofascicolo 8. “Assistenza sanitaria-medicoostretica e armadio farmeutico”.
A report dated 8 December 1954 written by Aaron Schreiman, an industrial engineer from
New Jersey, following a visit to La Martella earlier the same year was critical of the amount
of influence, in his opinion, that UNRRA-CASAS social workers had over the life of the village:
‘The government workers at La Martella (these social workers are also government
employees) are a group whose experience in solving problems is limited by their working
through governmental agencies. They have had little or no experience with other methods of
solving problems. Hence their approach is very apt to be, “The government should do the
job.” Such thinking in 1918 by the Russian planners led to the Communist State where the
government knows what is best for everyone. Similar thinking will, in its mildest form, lead
in Italy to the Socialist State.’ See NARA, UC-17 - La Martella; ARC Identifier 4319707 / MLR
Number UD 1262; File Unit from Record Group 469: Records of U.S. Foreign Assistance
Agencies, 1942-1963; Department of State. International Cooperation Administration.
Mission to Italy. Production and Technical Assistance Division.
250
allow the PCI to fill the void.132 Writing about the incident in 1960 the local
journalist and historian Leonardo Sacco claimed that the UNRRA-CASAS social
workers, one of whom was his brother, were removed from La Martella because:
‘agli occhi di alcuni ambienti governativi l’assistenza sociale dello UNRRA aveva
il grave difetto di non essere “politicizzata”, e di favorire anzi l’autonoma
organizzazione degli assegnatari, evitando la solita strada del paternalismo.’ 133
The request for UNRRA-CASAS to discontinue its provision of social services in
the village was, according to Sacco, personally delivered by Emilio Colombo, the
then undersecretary for agriculture, to the head of UNRRA-CASAS.134 Sacco
traces the slow demise of the original vision for La Martella to the removal of
UNRRA-CASAS’s social workers from the village. Instead the land reform board
assumed responsibility for social care at La Martella with UNRRA-CASAS
increasingly marginalized from the project’s development.135 This culminated in
February 1960 when the land reform board bought the 167 houses and public
buildings that UNRRA-CASAS had financed and built at La Martella. This brought
UNRRA-CASAS’s direct involvement in a project that it had pioneered to an end.
The additional 62 houses scheduled for completion in 1956 were never
constructed.136 During the discussions about the second Special Law for the
132
133
134
135
136
Laura Sasso Calogero, ‘La lezione di La Martella’, Nord e Sud, (1955), no. 12, pp. 50-54.
Sacco, ‘La Martella nel ‘60’, in Baglieri, Fabbri and Sacco, pp. 403-406.
Sacco, Matera contemporanea, pp. 46-48
A report dated 13 May 1955 entitled ‘Appunto per L’On. Colombo sulla situazione de “La
Martella”’ which outlined UNRRA-CASAS’s work in the village claimed that ‘se ragioni
d’ordine dovessero richiedere che, per uniformità d’indirizzo nella risoluzione dei problemi
di riforma e trasformazione fosse opportuno che il settore dell’assistenza sociale e famigliare
venga svolto esclusivamente dall’Ente di Riforma in quanto gli assegnatari del borgo sia
direttamente che indirettamente sono interessati all’opera di tale Ente, la Prima Giunta può
far cessare tale sua attività nel borgo.’ See ACS, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione generale
servizi civili, Attività assistenziali italiane e internazionali, busta 93, documentazione
generale.
For details on the negotiations between UNRRA-CASAS and the land reform board see ACS,
MI, Direzione generale servizi civili, Attività assistenziali italiane e internazionali, busta 93,
documentazione generale.
251
Sassi in the Italian Senate on 26 February 1958, Emilio Colombo referenced La
Martella’s early problems but claimed that: ‘ora [1958] la borgata funziona.’ 137
The problems with La Martella’s public services and infrastructure, however,
were still present in the 1970s and 1980s. The village’s roads and footpaths
were not maintained and had fallen into a state of disrepair; there were
problems with the postal service and refuse collection; the local doctor’s
surgery had been closed and subsequently illegally occupied; the public
transport links to Matera were expensive and unreliable; and the local police
station had been shut down.138
La Martella’s slow demise prompts the question why a project hailed as a
model for southern development was seemingly allowed to fall into disrepair?
As outlined above the rivalry between UNRRA-CASAS and the land reform board
appears to have been the primary reason for the catalogue of errors that
characterized the village’s early development. However, La Martella’s problems
persisted even after UNRRA-CASAS was no longer involved in the project. A
number of contemporary sources blamed the village’s decline on the land
reform board which, it was argued, was under the DC’s direct control. The Ente
di riforma’s actions at La Martella, it was claimed, reflected a wider Christian
Democrat policy of using land reform as a means to politically control southern
137
138
See Senato della Repubblica, Finanziamento integrative per il risanamento dei “Sassi” di
Matera, Disegno di legge n. 619, seduta del 26 febbraio 1958 reproduced in Cresci, pp. 353356.
See the various documents in ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 84, fascicolo 680, Matera
- Situazione sociale del Borgo La Martella, and in particular the letter of complaint from the
local section of Comunità Braccianti to the Prefect of Matera dated 20 April 1970. Speaking in
1993 about La Martella, former ECA official Vincent Barnett claimed that: ‘within a year or
two, the people were going back to their caves [laughs] because they liked the community
life of the caves better than they liked the artificially-structured things that happen when
some planners build you a city as the way you ought to live, instead of the way you like to
live.’ Interview by Eric Christenson and Linda Christenson with Dr. Vincent Barnett
(European Cooperation Administration Program Chief Italy), August 19 1993.
252
landless workers rather than an attempt to improve social and economic
conditions. This conclusion dominates the existing literature on La Martella.
Writing in 1955 for the Communist periodical Cronache del Mezzogiorno,
Giovanni Dello Jacovo claimed that the agricultural reform board was the agent
of a government which had used land allocation as a means of social control. La
Martella was a prime example of this strategy. The village was a ‘monumento
eretto ai perfidi sistemi di un regime che proclama gli assegnatari piccolo
proprietari e li vuole invece servi della gleba, chiusi nei campi di
concentramento dei comprensori di riforma.’139 Leonardo Sacco came to a
similar conclusion in an article originally published in Il Mondo in 1955. He
claimed that the land reform board had come under increasing pressure to
adhere to the DC’s demands at Matera. La Martella’s failings were the result of a
‘composito programma che da vari ambienti e centrali preferiva la
trasformazione degli abitanti dei Sassi in sottoproletariato o piccolissima
borghesia – per assicurarsene il controllo politico.’140 It is clear that agrarian
reform, together with the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, was crucial in the DC’s
construction of political consensus in post-war southern Italy. However, as Paul
Ginsborg has noted ‘this strategy was not planned and executed according to
some preconceived blueprint, but was rather a series of contingent responses
which none the less reveal an underlying unity of intent.’141 Land reform was a
reaction to peasant land occupations in Calabria, Basilicata and Puglia in the late
1940s and an attempt to halt communist gains in southern Italy. It was hoped
that the transformation of landless agricultural workers into small landowners
139
140
141
Dello Jacovo, p. 501
Sacco, Matera contemporanea, pp. 52-55
Ginsborg, p. 139
253
would diffuse social unrest and foster political consensus amongst assignees. 142
However, in the context of La Martella the opposite seems to have happened.
Social unrest and tensions were caused by the village’s lack of amenities and the
failure to provide adequate farm land to new residents. Thus the question
remains: if the DC directly controlled the land reform board why did it
apparently allow such a high-profile project to fail?
One potential explanation is the relationship between the DC and the
land reform board. The argument that the Ente di riforma was under the DC’s
direct influence appears to neglect the government party’s factious nature and
its inability to maintain control over the numerous post-war public bodies and
collateral organizations it had established. While the image of an all-seeing and
all-controlling Christian Democratic Party that pursued a programmatic
strategy of social control in southern Italy has proved to be seductive for
historians of post-war Matera, it is a viewpoint which overlooks the complex
matrix of political rivalries and infighting that defined the DC at national and
local levels in the 1950s. As Rosario Forlenza has argued, the DC was a ‘dynamic
and complex phenomenon, conditioned by circumstances and contingencies
rather than by programmatic or ideological assumptions.’143 The development
programme at Matera, similar to the intervento straordinario, appears to have
been undertaken for short-term political gains rather than as part of a
systematic government strategy ‘to dictate politically sanctioned lifestyles and
to transform Materans’ beliefs and allegiances, their values and ideology’ as has
142
143
The limited scope of land reform and the marginalization of the southern landowning classes
meant that direct political gains at a national level were ultimately negligible. Land reform
affected only 3 per cent of the Italian peninsula and 1 per cent of the Republic’s agricultural
workers; just 15 per cent of braccianti were allocated expropriated land. See King, Land
Reform, pp. 210-225.
Forlenza, pp. 331-349
254
been recently claimed.144 It seems more fruitful, therefore, for historians to
approach government intervention at Matera as having been reactive, malleable,
and conditioned by contemporary political exigencies rather than part of a longterm and coherent political strategy.
Archival documents from the Archivio Sturzo in Rome suggest that the
relationship between the DC and the land reform board at Matera was not as
straightforward as presented in the contemporary critiques cited above. Rather
it mirrored the internal rivalries of the governing party and the tension between
national and local party branches. The complex relations between local and
national DC politicians and the land reform board could offer a supplemental
explanation for La Martella’s continued problems after UNRRA-CASAS had
ceased to be involved in the project. A report written in 1955 by Michele
Tantolo, DC Provincial Secretary for Matera, implies that there were tensions
between the DC’s local branch at Matera and the land reform board. It suggests
that there was a gap between the governing party’s local and national
representatives. Tantolo delivered a damning assessment of the land reform
board in his report. He claimed that ‘troppi dirigenti, a parte la loro
impreparazione strettamente e squisitamente sociale, non solo non sono
democratici cristiani, quand’anche sono feroci avversari del nostro Partito e dei
suoi rappresentanti periferici.’ 145 Moreover, he claimed that it was ‘pressoche
impossibile scalzarli, perche, nella maggior parte dei casi, sono emanazioni di
144
145
Toxey, Materan Contradictions, p. 55. Toxey describes the Sassi’s post-war evacuation as an
‘act of violence’ in which ‘the government of Rome essentially colonized Matera. Its
paternalistic purpose ... was to transform the orientalized peasants who lived a communally
sufficient lifestyle (by necessity) into Italian citizens and consumers dependent on the state
political and economic systems.’ Ibid., pp. 55-56.
ASILS, FDC, Segretaria politica, Atti dei segretari 7, Amintore Fanfani, Uffici centrali,
Corrispondenza con gli organi periferici, scatola 69, fascicolo 5, Convegno dei segretari
provinciali e regionali del Mezzogiorno, Castelgandolfo 6-8 gennaio 1955 (testa di relazione
riguardante la provincia di Matera).
255
gruppi clientelistici strettamente legati a questo o a quel papavero, ovvero, a
questo onorevole o a quell’altro, s’intende, democratici cristiani.’ 146 While it is
difficult to corroborate Tantolo’s implication that senior DC politicians had
provided non-party members jobs with the land reform board, nonetheless the
report suggests that there were internal rivalries and power struggles within
the governing party. A memorandum dated 4 April 1955 claims that the Ente di
riforma had fired the head of the DC’s local section at Pisticci for political
activism amongst assignees. This activity had been viewed unfavourably by his
supervisors who are described in the report as ‘probabilmente mangiapreti.’147
The implication, similar to Tantolo’s report above, is that the reform board was
staffed by people openly hostile to the DC. Rather than an organization under
the direct control of the Christian Democrats then, the archival sources cited
above suggest that the land reform board was not a public body which simply
adhered to the ruling party’s political requests on a local level. Thus, the
relationship between the DC and the Ente di riforma appears to have been more
complex and nuanced than previously thought. The land reform board could
have been an example of what Paul Ginsborg dubbed the DC’s ‘uncontrollable
monsters’, i.e. public bodies and collateral organizations that the governing
party at times struggled to influence and control.148 The complex relationship
between the land reform board and the Christian Democrats outlined above,
coupled with the internal divisions within the ruling party itself, could offer a
supplemental reason why La Martella struggled to live up to the image of a
146
147
148
Ibid.
See ASILS, FDC, Segretaria politica, Atti dei segretari 7, Amintore Fanfani, Uffici centrali,
Corrispondenza con gli organi periferici, scatola 64, sottofascicolo 6, Corrispondenza con
Matera.
Ginsborg, p. 157
256
model for southern development as depicted in official sources even after
UNRRA-CASAS was no longer involved in the project.
The archival sources consulted for this study show that Emilio Colombo,
Basilicata’s most important post-war politician, was kept constantly informed of
La Martella’s various problems as well as complaints about the village from
residents and visitors.149 If Colombo was one of the papaveri referred to in
Tantolo’s report, that suggests he held influence over various employees of the
land reform board. Therefore, the question remains why, if Colombo wielded
such influence, would he have allowed an important project in terms of
government propaganda to fall into anonymity and disrepair. It seems, above all,
that La Martella’s slow decline over a twenty-year period reflected dwindling
political interest in the project at a national level, and in the wider risanamento
effort at Matera in general, from the late 1950s onwards. Its symbolic capital
had dwindled to zero. The project had been important primarily in terms of
political propaganda. The village’s development, moreover, needs to be viewed
in the context of wider social and economic upheavals in post-war Italy. The
economic boom of 1958-1963 saw Italy become a predominately industrial
nation. This period was also marked by migration, both internal and external
which included a rural exodus as millions of Italians swapped the countryside
149
See for example a report on La Martella by the Cassa per Mezzogiorno dated 21 May 1955 in
ACS, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione generale servizi civili, Attività assistenziali italiane e
internazionali, busta 93, documentazione generale; and a letter dated 5 March 1955 from a
priest who had been so disappointed following his visit to La Martella that he wrote a letter
of complaint to Amintore Fanfani who later forwarded it to Colombo. The priest wrote that:
‘sono rimasto alquanto deluso nell’osservare e sentire. Parlai con una persona qualificata del
Villaggio, degna di fiducia (non potei accostare altre persone perché avevo poco tempo
disponibile a anche perché credetti sufficiente la testimonianza sua) “Molto fumo (l’arrosto
c’è ma non nella qualità che si desidererebbe o che si aspettrebbe [sic]) molti mangiano
attorno a un così deliziosi piatto, molto sciupio di denaro, molti capi e sottocapi, ingegneri e
sottoingegneri, molti guadagni illeciti ecc”.’ ASILS, FDC, Segretaria politica, Atti dei segretari
7, Amintore Fanfani, Uffici centrali, Corrispondenza con gli organi periferici, scatola 64,
sottofascicolo 6, Corrispondenza con Matera.
257
for Italy’s rapidly growing provincial capitals and the many centres of industrial
and economic growth.150 As a result land reform was relegated in terms of
political importance as the aspirations of many Italians turned away from
agriculture. In the context of La Martella this is reflected in the fact that the
village no longer featured in official propaganda in the late 1950s. The project
seems to have had a finite value in the context of promoting the government’s
southern development programme, in particular land reform, and was no longer
of political relevance at the end of the 1950s following the onset of the economic
miracle. The political disinterest in La Martella appears to have been apparent
at a local and regional level. During a talk given in the village’s Communist
section on 9 May 1980, Giambattista Barberino, the PCI’s regional counsellor for
Basilicata, denounced ‘lo stato di abbandono in cui resa detta Borgata e la
mancata esecuzione di opera per l’irrigazione delle campagne circostante.’ 151
The village’s political abandonment was blamed on the disinterest of local
politicians, in particular the DC, and the land reform board. While Barberino’s
words need to be viewed in the context political canvassing, contemporary
press accounts of La Martella present a similar description of a village that was
no longer of political interest and had thus been left to slowly deteriorate.152
The sense of frustration that La Martella’s residents felt at their apparent
150
151
152
For the data on interregional migration see Ginsborg, p. 219 and Foot, Modern Italy, p. 138;
for information on the post-war rural exodus see Corrado Barberis, ‘The agricultural exodus
in Italy’, Sociologia Ruralis, vol. 8 (1968), pp. 179-188; for overseas emigration in the postwar period see Amoreno Martinelli, ‘L’emigrazione transoceanica fra gli anni quaranta e
sessanta’, in Piero Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi and Emilio Franzina, (eds.), Storia
dell’emigrazione italiana, Donzelli Editore, Rome, 2001, pp. 369-384 and Federico Romero,
‘L’emigrazione operaia in Europa (1948-1973)’, in Bevilacqua, De Clementi and Franzina, pp.
397-414.
ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 84, fascicolo 680, Matera - Situazione sociale del Borgo
La Martella
See the press clippings from the 1970s and 1980s in ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta
84, fascicolo 680, Matera - Situazione sociale del Borgo La Martella
258
abandonment can be gauged in a letter of protest dated 8 April 1972, signed by
80 assignees and sent to the Italian Prime Minister; the local prefect and mayor;
Emilio Colombo; the regional president; the DC regional secretary and the land
reform board. The letter was written in the wake of eviction orders served to a
number of residents who had refused to accept the terms of a new housing
agreement proposed by the land reform board. The village’s inhabitants had
originally been promised the possibility of redeeming their mortgages
according to the original value that UNRRA-CASAS had stipulated in the 1950s.
However, the land reform board wanted to remove this guarantee from the new
housing contract. The petition expressed the frustrations that a community,
hailed as a model for southern development in the mid-1950s, had accumulated
over the intervening twenty-year period:
I cittadini di La Martella sono stati i pioneri dell’esperimento di riforma
agraria e di sfollamento dei Sassi mediante la costituzione di un borgo
rurale con rappresentanze di altre categorie sociali (artigiani,
commercianti, ecc.) e hanno per cio affrontato e subito straordinari
sacrifici personali e familiari di natura spirituale e morale ed anche
economica essendo rimasti isolati dalla citta privi dei conforti e dei
servizi di cui normalmente godono altri cittadini, con conseguenti
maggiori spese, pur rimanendo nella piu assoluta poverta. 153
Conclusion
Notwithstanding the problems with the La Martella project, the village became
one of the key images utilized by the DC in the early 1950s to promote its
reform programme for southern Italy. La Martella was one of the first joint Cassa
per il Mezzogiorno and land-reform projects to be inaugurated and thus had a
unique political and historical significance in the context of publicizing the
intervento straordinario. As outlined above, Matera and La Martella were
153
ASM, Prefettura (Ricovero 90), busta 84, fascicolo 692, La Martella Ente di Riforma
259
juxtaposed in official sources to promote southern Italy’s rapid transition from
‘backwardness’ to ‘modernity’. The village was used to espouse the message that
improvements to housing and infrastructure would strengthen rather than
erode traditional family and community bonds. However, the project had
initially been the brainchild of UNRRA-CASAS. It was co-opted into the wider
reform programme undertaken at Matera following De Gasperi’s first visit to the
town in 1950 and the mounting political and media focus on a city that had been
dubbed a national shame. La Martella’s failure to live up to its billing as a model
for southern development revealed the coordination problems and internal
rivalries between the official bodies involved in the project’s construction and
management. The village’s continued uneven development suggests that the
relationship between the land reform board and the Christian Democrats may
have been more complex than the image previously presented in the existing
literature. Above all, however, it seems that the political interest in the village’s
maintenance ran parallel to its role in promoting the DC’s southern reform
programme. This suggests that La Martella was ultimately, as Marcello Fabbri
has suggested, ‘come opera da regime da mostrare e fotografare.’ 154 Once land
reform had declined in political importance in the late 1950s with the onset of
the economic miracle, Matera, the so-called capital of southern Italy’s civiltà
contadina, and La Martella, land reform’s model village, all but disappeared from
official sources and the village slowly fell into a state of neglect. Behind the
veneer offered by the numerous official images of La Martella, therefore, was the
reality of a project that had failed to deliver on the promises of De Gasperi and
his party. As a result, the village which was hailed as a model for southern
154
Quoted in Francione, p. 113
260
development in fact became a monument to the intervento straordinario’s many
limitations.155
155
Research visits to La Martella in 2010 and 2011 revealed that the village has been
reinvented as an industrial zone and hamlet of Matera with thirty-two houses recently built
in a new residential area called Ecopolis in 2009. Notably on 25 May 2012 La Martella’s first
ever library was opened. The local historian and journalist Leonardo Sacco donated his
personal archive to the village under the proviso that the public library would be dedicated
to the memory of Adriano Olivetti. For further information on La Martella today see Vito
Orlando and Mariana Pacucci, La Martella 50 anni dopo: situazione attuale e prospettive di
rinascita del borgo. Risultati dell’indagine socio-religiosa, Matera, 2004; and Francione, pp.
119-129.
261
Conclusions
Oggi su Matera e calato il silenzio: solo dei gruppi di tecnici stranieri o
alcuni studenti delle Facolta di Architettura continuano a interessarsi
all’esperimento effettuato e alle consequenze che ne sono derivate … La
“storia” di Matera e nata con i primi interventi della Riforma agraria, e
dalle prospettive di mutamento del latifondo ha preso slancio e vita; tutti
i programmi hanno avuto come bara la soluzione del problema
contadino. Oggi che l’indirizzo politico e mutato, che della Riforma si
tende a parlare solo come un capitolo chiuso, anche la “storia” di Matera
rientra in questo libro di cui si vuol scrivere l’indice.1
The above quote comes from an article that the architect and urban planner
Carlo Aymonino wrote in 1959 about the risanamento programme for the Sassi.
It reflects the fact that by the time the second special law for Matera was passed
on 21 March 1958 the Sassi were no longer considered a pressing political
concern. Following the implementation of the first special law for Matera and
the resulting risanamento programme, the Christian Democrats claimed to have
resolved a national shame and taken the first step in tackling the southern
question. Instead the city became a laboratory for urban planners and architects
and an important source for government propaganda promoting the intervento
straordinario. Official patriotic narratives produced in the context of Matera
switched from shame to pride. However, Matera’s time in the political and media
spotlight was limited. The years of Italy’s post-war economic miracle were
marked by rural exodus as millions of Italians swapped the countryside for the
country’s rapidly growing provincial capitals and centres of industrial and
economic growth.2 The issue of land ownership, which had inspired thousands
of braccianti to occupy the great estates in the immediate post-war years,
ceased to have the same political currency at a national level. Instead from the
1
2
Carlo Aymonino, ‘Matera: mito e realtà’, Casabella continua, (1959), no. 231, pp. 11-12
See Foot, Modern Italy, p. 138 and Ginsborg, p. 219.
262
late 1950s the Christian Democrat government turned its attention to a
programme of industrial development for southern Italy.3 In this broader
historical context, Matera’s symbolic role as the capital of southern rural culture
and emblem of the southern question diminished in political importance. The
fact that no government ministers attended Spine Bianche’s inauguration in
1959, and that there was no national press coverage of this event, suggest that
by that point in time the Sassi had lost their political value in official
propaganda.4 In the 1960s Matera and the Sassi had all but disappeared from
political debate, official sources and the national press. As a result the city faded
back into provincial obscurity.
The Italian state spent over 35 billion lire on rehousing Sassi residents
from 1952 onwards. Despite this investment a number of cave homes continued
to be occupied into the 1970s: over 2,395 dwellings were still in use in 1958 and
approximately 420, albeit illegally, as late as 1971.5 Two further special laws for
the Sassi were passed in 1967 and 1971 and a national competition on how to
preserve the then largely uninhabited 29-hectare site was held in 1974.6 From
an urban centre that had housed an estimated 15,000 people in the 1950s, the
Sassi had become a ghost city that was used as an illegal rubbish dump and
associated with petty crime. A preservation order was passed in 1986, however,
and the Sassi’s elevation to a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993 saw Matera’s
former slums rebranded as a cultural treasure that needed to be preserved. A
3
4
5
6
For a brief summary of this process see Piero Bevilacqua, pp. 98-102. Instead for a more
detailed account see Salvatore Cafiero, Storia dell’intervento straordinario nel Mezzogiorno
(1950-1993), Piero Lacaita Editore, Manduria, 2000.
Pontrandolfi, p. 154
Ibid., p. 186
For an overview of debates in the 1960s about what to do with the Sassi see Restucci and
Tafuri, pp. 70-83; for a summary of the public competition for preserving the Sassi see the
articles in Basilicata, no. 1-3, 1977, pp. 23-31.
263
process of repopulation and urban regeneration began in the 1990s and today
the site is a popular tourist destination.7
This research project has examined how and why Matera came to be
seen as a national shame and a symbol of the southern question post-1945. It
has shown the impact that these concepts had on the city’s post-war history. It
contends that notions of national shame and the southern question are
conditioned by the historical contexts in which they are produced and are not
fixed or universal givens. They change across time and space. Studies of
nationalism and the southern question, therefore, need to be carried out on a
micro-level to avoid broad generalizations. The case-study of Matera has shown
that notions of the city as a symbol of the southern question originated in Carlo
Levi’s description of Matera in Cristo si è fermato a Eboli and gained cultural
currency at political and intellectual levels due to the book’s commercial and
critical success in the immediate post-war period. The notion of Matera as Other
to ideas of modernity was appropriated in the context of discourses of national
shame as post-war Italy’s two main parties, the Christian Democrats and the
Italian Communist Party, looked to forge political identities and build electoral
consensus. Moreover, the image of Matera as a symbol of the southern question
was a key image in promoting the DC government’s twin reform programme for
southern Italy. The Sassi were used to represent southern Italian poverty in
contrast to the images of modernization produced to publicize the work of the
land reform board and the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. Furthermore, this thesis
has traced the impact that notions of Matera as a national shame and symbol of
7
For a discussion of the preservation efforts undertaken at Matera since 1986 and the urban,
economic and social changes that they have engendered see Toxey, Materan Contradictions,
pp. 235-300.
264
the southern question had on the city’s social and urban fabric in the 1950s.
Despite the fact that living standards at Matera were comparable with many
other parts of Italy in the immediate post-war period, political and media
pressure resulted in the enactment of special legislation for Matera’s cave
homes on 17 May 1952. The Sassi were slowly emptied in the following decades
and new rural and urban housing projects built to accommodate their 15,000
residents. Matera’s social and urban topography was transformed irrevocably.
This thesis has shown that narratives of national shame and the southern
question were central to this process.
On a micro-level this thesis has made an original contribution to the
large body of work on post-war Matera. It has drawn on previously unused
primary sources and employed original methods for examining the city’s postwar history. In particular the concepts of national shame and the southern
question had been largely overlooked or under theorised in the existing
literature. The current research project has aimed to fill that gap. This research
project has situated Matera’s post-war history in the broader context of
historical processes at a national and international level. The risanamento
programme needs to be examined in the context of Cold War politics, land
reform, Italy’s post-war economic boom, and the rural exodus of the 1950s. This
thesis has challenged the prevalent argument in the existing literature that the
special’s laws limitations reflected a deliberate Christian Democrat strategy to
push landless workers out of agriculture and into industry. Rather the primary
sources consulted for this study suggest that the risanamento programme’s
problems were the result of a lack of institutional coordination, political
infighting, the failure to consult the local population, and fading political interest
265
in a project whose propaganda value diminished in importance in the late
1950s.
Furthermore, this thesis has contributed to the existing body of
knowledge on the history of the southern question. The majority of work
carried out on this topic has focused on the Liberal period. In contrast, this
research project has examined narratives of the southern question generated in
the context of post-war Matera. The notion that Matera was a symbol of the
southern question saw the city become a testing ground for how to resolve the
Mezzogiorno’s perceived social and economic problems. Generic models were
applied to a specific local case with limited results. This project has shown that
competing and contrasting ideas of the Mezzogiorno were created and used to
promote modernization programmes for southern Italy post-1945. These
narratives were shaped by the historical context in which they were created: the
push for land reform, Cold War politics, and the intervento straordinario. These
concepts, moreover, had a concrete impact on government policy and southern
Italy’s social and urban development. The current research project has
endeavoured to make a modest contribution to the existing body of research on
the southern question. However, more work on images of the Mezzogiorno in
the post-war period is needed. Archival research for this thesis revealed that a
large body of official newsreel and print material was produced in the 1950s to
promote land reform and Cassa per il Mezzogiorno.8 Hitherto this material has
8
For example, during the research phase of this project numerous copies of the monthly
magazine Vita Contadina that the agricultural reform board produced in the 1950s for the
families that had been assigned land and housing were consulted. In addition, the Istituto
Luce’s online archive provides access to the large number of newsreels and documentaries
produced to publicise government initiatives in southern Italy in the post-war period. See
http://www.archivioluce.com/archivio/ (accessed 26/07/2013).
266
been largely ignored.9 A comprehensive study of these sources would provide a
greater understanding of post-war notions of the South and shed light on the
complex interplay between discourse, politics and official policy during a period
of great social, cultural, and urban change.
In addition, the current research project has looked to make an original
contribution to the study of Italian national identity and the history of emotions.
Studies of Italian nationalism have tended to focus on the Liberal period. The
current research project, in contrast, has examined notions of Italian
nationalism in a post-war context. The patriotic narratives that Matera
generated during the scope of this study reveal that there were competing
notions of Italian national identity. These concepts were one of the ways in
which political identities were forged in a Cold War context. The DC and the PCI
looked to define the national ‘we’ and concurrently accuse their political
opponents of being ‘bad’ patriots. This thesis has shown that broad
generalizations about the feelings of Italians, or in fact any group of people, need
to be avoided. Rather historians need to focus their attention on the emotional
scenarios that were created and the specific emotional communities which
shaped these narratives at a micro-level. The theoretical framework used to
examine national shame in the context of post-war Matera could potentially be
used to study patriotic narratives in different cultural, temporal and
geographical contexts.
Through the use of hitherto neglected archival sources this research
project has looked to register the absent voices of the 15,000 people that the
9
Paola Bonifazio has recently examined notions of the South in a number of official
documentaries, but arguably a lot more work remains to be done on this topic. See the third
chapter in Bonifazio, Narrating Modernization.
267
risanamento programme directly affected. These sources, however, are
fragmentary in nature and the history of post-war Matera from below remains
to be written. Although a number of recent studies have incorporated an oral
history component, this is an area of study that could be developed further in
future research. A community-based project in which local residents interview
older relatives that were moved from the Sassi to new housing could be a
successful avenue for large-scale data collection in this regard. Vernacular
photography is another primary source that could be used to examine the
experiences and perspectives of former Sassi dwellers post-1945. The Museo
virtuale della memoria collettiva di Matera has collected a large body of photos
depicting various aspects of life in post-war Matera.10 These images are
available via their website, but hitherto no comprehensive study of these
important sources appears to have been undertaken. They provide a potential
window into the lives of the people that notions of Matera as a national shame
and symbol of the southern question most directly affected.
This thesis is a history of how and why the city of Matera came to be seen
as a national shame and a symbol of the southern question in the post-war
period. The discursive construction of these ideas was a politically charged
process. These narratives were produced in the context of emerging Cold War
rivalries and the battle for electoral consensus in a country that was rebuilding
itself in material, social, cultural and political terms following twenty years of
Fascist rule and the destruction of the Second World War. The imaginings of the
nation and of the South generated in the context of post-war Matera were
created through words and images, but they had concrete effects. They
10
See http://www.muvmatera.it/ (accessed 22/07/2013).
268
mobilized political opinion, influenced government policy, shaped Matera’s
urban landscape, and transformed the lives of 15,000 people permanently.
269
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